‘i’ is for injunction – nothing super about it
Paper Boy – the irreverent insider
Last month I finished on Osama Bin Laden’s lingerie model niece. Although Bin Laden’s demise was big news at the start of the month, it was dwarfed by column inches devoted to celebrity super injunctions and privacy legislation. I bet Giggsy wishes he could have spent the last 5 weeks, let alone the next 5 years, hiding in Abbottabad.
If Ryan Giggs had been in hiding, he would have missed the launch of a Saturday edition of the i newspaper (he probably missed it anyway, residing most of the time in the Greater Manchester area). Evidently, the rationale for publishing on a weekend seems to be two-fold. Firstly a hypothesis that the Monday to Friday editions of i encourages sampling of and/or trading up to the Saturday Independent. Secondly, that reader research delivered a killer insight that i readers would welcome the chance to buy a Saturday edition to fit with their reading habits on a busy day.
Right, let’s question both of these related variables. As mooted in last month’s column, there are so many variables linked to the sale of a newspaper – availability, price, promotion, merchandising, the weather etc – that unless there is a major news event or a heavily-promoted free DVD, all these work together or against each other, making it more or less impossible to isolate the redeeming factor.
Moreover, asking readers what they would expect to do in the future presented with a new opportunity is fraught with innuendo. Seasoned anoraks will tell you that your answer is driven, to a large extent, by how you ask the question.
Therefore, let’s assume that respondents were asked a complex array of conjoint hypotheses that included options about other choices. Not just in readership but other expectations of the use of time and attention, price points and the time of day of likely purchase. They might then have a reasonable chance of forecasting the likely popularity of a Saturday edition.
However, I would be surprised if this did take place. The fact that the whole concept of i was about time-poor working consumers wanting slightly more editorial gravitas than Metro seems an oxymoron when conjoined with the word Saturday.
A more likely scenario is that there was spare print capacity and editorial staff available on a Friday night, already used to subbing for two papers – basically abridged news stories whilst maintaining some of the feature material.
But then maybe I’m missing something and the affluent like a bargain (30p) on a Saturday rather than the longer, fatter and more expensive option – as demonstrated in the retail world by the rise of Poundland in Windsor (read Dominic Lawson in i – and obviously The Independent – on 24 May).
Anyway, May’s ABC results will not yet give us a clue to the success or not of the Saturday edition of i. Newspaper sales are not as transparent as the TV overnights, where you can see how well or not (depending on expectations) The Only Way is Essex is performing (at least in terms of linear broadcast). Talking of Essex, Chris Huhne’s alleged deed of asking his wife to admit to take the rap and points for a speeding offence that happened in the county would never have happened in France… anyone in power would have just asked their mistress. Liberté, égalité, infidélité.