News Corp will return to the Sunday tabloid market in the UK tomorrow, as Rupert Murdoch counts on readers having moved on from the phone-hacking scandal that led to the closure of the News of the World seven months ago.
The first Sunday edition of the Sun newspaper will go on sale for 50 pence (79 cents), featuring stories about soccer and celebrities and competing with publications, including the Sunday versions of the Mirror and Mail for the UK’s 8.3 million Sunday newspaper readers.
The News of the World closed after 168 years, as advertisers pulled out following an outcry against reporters who had hacked into mobile phones, including that of a murdered schoolgirl. News Corp said all the advertising space has been sold for the Sun on Sunday. The furore that surrounded the phone-hacking has died down and Murdoch is aiming for at least two million readers.
“There comes a point where the general public becomes less interested,” Doug McCabe, an analyst at researcher Enders Analysis, said in an interview. “And, having a brand brought to market seven days a week, every day of the year has extraordinary power for advertisers. It’s not a complicated sale. They’re simply expanding a brand that is already very successful.”
New York-based News Corp’s 80-year-old chief executive officer Rupert Murdoch, who flew into London last week to oversee the Sun’s expansion, may find the Sunday edition competes for a smaller pool of readers. Since the News of the World closed in July, more than one million customers have disappeared from the Sunday market, according to data from the Audit Bureau of Circulation.
‘Two million!’
When the News of the World closed, it controlled 2.67 million readers of a total Sunday circulation of 9.66 million, making it the most popular UK newspaper. Its readers have dispersed to competing tabloids or stopped buying Sunday papers altogether, according to the ABC.
“I will be very happy at anything substantially over two million!” Murdoch said on his Twitter page on February 24, referring to the circulation of the Sun’s Sunday edition.
The 50-pence price tag of the new paper is half the price of the News of the World.
In response, Trinity Mirror Plc will cut the price of the Sunday Mirror to 50 pence in some areas such as London and the southeast coast from £1, said a person familiar with the matter, declining to be identified because the plan wasn’t public. The Mail on Sunday costs £1.50. The two are the Sun’s biggest Sunday rivals, with 44 per cent of readers and similar stories on sports and celebrities.
‘Injection of life’
“What the Sunday newspaper needs is an injection of life, which it is certainly going to get on Sunday,” Martin Sorrell, chief executive of the world’s biggest advertising company WPP Plc (WPP), said on Bloomberg Television’s Last Word in an interview with Louise Beale. “The consumer will have more choice, they’ll have more choice at lower price points and advertisers will have more choice.”
The Sun has been running a TV campaign this week counting down to the release of the Sunday edition with the tag line “In Britain The Sun comes out every day.”
Still, some of the News of the World’s readers may not buy the Sun’s Sunday edition, said McCabe.
Soccer, fashion
“The News of the World was a fairly unique product in the marketplace,” he said. “The precise positioning of that product will just never be replicated and the other factor is there is just underlying decline in demand for Sunday newspapers.”
The new Sun will have a pull-out about soccer matches called Super Goals, fashion advice from Nancy Dell’Olio, a contestant on TV show Strictly Come Dancing and former girlfriend of soccer coach Sven-Goran Eriksson, and an extra day of the Sun’s Bizarre show business column.
The absence of the News of the World initially helped News Corp’s rivals. The circulation of the Sunday Mirror and the Mail on Sunday jumped by double digits in July. The Daily Mail and General Trust Plc (DMGT)’s Mail on Sunday got a 17 per cent boost to 2.26 million, becoming the largest Sunday tabloid in the UK, according to the ABC. Trinity Mirror’s Sunday Mirror tabloid saw circulation jump 64 per cent to 1.79 million.
By January, many of those readers had disappeared, and the Mail on Sunday’s circulation was down to 1.92 million.
Investigations
Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, competes with News Corp units in providing financial news and information.
Murdoch is starting the new newspaper before a report from UK lawmakers that is expected to reprimand News Corp. executives who were in charge of newsrooms that bribed public officials and hacked into voicemails. Following the News of the World’s closure, Murdoch and his son James, the former head of the News International publishing unit and now deputy chief operating officer of News Corp, had to appear before UK Parliament to explain how much they knew.
News International also faces a judge-led inquiry into press ethics and three police probes into phone and computer hacking and bribery of police officers, which have resulted in about 30 arrests, including 10 journalists at the Sun.
The closing of the News of the World was “just cynical,” said Chris Bryant, a lawmaker from the opposition Labour Party, who had sued the News of the World over phone-hacking. Tom Watson, the lawmaker who is helping prepare the report into News Corp executives, said “this will not draw a line under the crisis faced by News Corp in the UK.” Murdoch reply is that having an influential newspaper is the key to prevailing in the crisis.
According to a memo obtained by Bloomberg News, Murdoch told Sun employees on February 17: “Having a winning paper is the best answer to our critics.”
