FT To Drop Broadsheet For Budget One-Off

The Financial Times will switch its format to a tabloid edition for one day only later this month, producing a compact-only budget special.

The one-off title will hit newsstands on March 16th, just hours after Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown delivers his pre-election budget to the House of Commons.

According to The Guardian the reduced-format title will be just ten pages long, with the majority of its content being provided by the Financial Times‘ online division, FT.com. The paper also claims that the stripped down FT will appear in London only, with distribution concentrated most highly on the City.

The FT is believed to be planning distribution points outside tube and railway stations within the square mile, but claims that the tabloid title will be a marketing and promotional tool, rather than the first step to a full time compact FT.

However, the move is in line with a similar move made by the Independent last year (see Independent Ditches Broadsheet For Budget Special). The title reduced its format from broadsheet to compact to mark the 2004 budget, and while a spokeswoman for the paper dismissed claims that it was a step towards tabloid-only publication, the full-blown conversion of the paper followed just two months later (see Independent Ditches Broadsheet To Go Totally Tabloid).

The FT has seen its circulation stay reasonably level over the past few years, dipping only marginally from just over 435,000 in January 2000 to just over 422,000 in January 2005. However, the title has made several attempts to boost its circulation, although none have delivered any lasting success.

The newspaper’s publisher, Pearson, recently announced that the title made its first growth in revenue for four years, with a wide-ranging cost cutting drive proving its worth as losses were reduced from £32 million in 2003 to £9 million in 2004. The FT’s long-awaited return to profit in the final quarter of last year beat expectations of a break-even figure in December, with the paper looking strong for the coming 12 months (see Pearson Papers In The Pink As Stevenson Steps Down).

Financial Times: 020 873 3000 www.ft.com

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