Red-top editors' job to manage decline

These are the worst of times to be a red top tabloid editor. No matter how lively a paper you produce or how much you promote it, sales just keep on sliding. The mighty Mirror, which used to sell more than 3m copies a day, struggled to stay over half of that in July, with sales of 1.56m. Its Sunday namesake now sells only 1.4m, which is at least a lot more than its Sunday sister, the People, which also used to sell more than 3m, but now manages a paltry 740,000 - fewer than several quality titles.

Over at Murdoch's News International, the trend is the same. The Sun, which often managed 4.5m in the 80s, is now tottering on the brink of 3m. The News of the World, which used to sell over 5m, is not much better, at 3.3m. So, cue much culling of red-top editors, a precarious occupation at the best of times, for failing their proprietors. Not really. There was a time when Murdoch used to bustle into Wapping shouting orders, berating his editors and demanding changes to stem the decline. Now even he regards it as inevitable.

The rise of multi-channel TV and the internet have done for the tabloids. In the days of the old BBC-ITV duopoly the red-tops provided what it didn't: sex, scandal, celebrity, gossip and sport. Today there are scores of channels devoted to these pursuits and what TV cannot provide, the internet can. Rupert Murdoch always said that when TV channels explode, red-top sales decline. Britain is now living proof of that maxim - but at least he owns the multi-channel TV platform that is destroying his tabloids; the Mirror has no such consolation.

So the name of the game for tabloid editors now is the successful management of decline: those who keep the slide to a modest rate will still hold on to their jobs. By that yardstick, the tenure of Sun editor Rebekah Wade looks safe even when her sales fall below 3m (probably by Christmas). Murdoch appreciates that nobody else is likely to do any better and, as Richard Desmond has shown with the Express, there's still a ton of money to be made out of falling circulations.

Andrew Neil
Monday August 20, 2007