The Saturday broadsheets battle will come to a head in January,
when the Daily Telegraph raises pagination and revamps its sections to
broaden its appeal as part of a sales-building exercise.
News of the overhaul comes just a week after it emerged that the Times
plans to introduce a new Saturday magazine which, if successful, could
lead to the end of the 10p Times on Monday (Campaign, 21 November). It
also takes place a week before Sunday Business relaunches.
From 10 January the Saturday Telegraph will gain up to 48 extra pages,
with new standalone travel, sports and personal finance sections. These
will be added to the existing Young Telegraph, motoring, arts and books
supplements and the Telegraph Magazine. These changes will be backed by
a substantial national TV and poster campaign.
Jeremy Deedes, managing director of the Telegraph, said: ’I have always
believed that reading habits have tended to polarise away from Monday to
Friday, and Saturday has become the most important day for people. We
have reached a point where all the sections were as big as we could get
them within the paper, so it makes sense that we could break them out.’
Deedes added that the existence of more standalone sections should
increase advertising opportunities.
The Telegraph’s average daily sale in October was 1,099,953 compared
with 814,899 for the Times. Although there are no official figures that
break down national newspaper sales on Saturdays, it is the strongest
selling day of the week.
