Tittle-tattle, said the chancellor, hassled by John Humphrys about swearing and shouting between his office and the strong and stable team who serve Mrs May, Tittle-tattle, tittle-tattle… But Philip Hammond clearly missed a trick. Are the reports of simmering hostilities between Nick Robinson and his women co-presenters on Today mere TT too? They’ve been current for many moons, advanced as one reason why the programme’s last editor took refuge in America. Time for a little discipline, for sharp leadership elbows swinging back?
That’s difficult when top talent on the BBC’s top political show can demand – and get – an audience with the director general as grievances accelerate easily up the chain. Perhaps Sarah Sands, the new Today boss (currently shadowing the job) can bring some of her fabled emollience to the troubled studio. Perhaps Humphrys will decide to stay on for another five welcome years, thus calming too-fevered speculation. Or perhaps (but not very “perhaps”, chancellor) it’s all tittle-tattle anyway.
Why doesn’t the Times baulk at bulks?
Puzzle corner. We expect newspaper print sales to keep dropping. And so they did again in April. Audit Bureau of Circulations figures show all nationals down year on year (with the Star on Sunday’s 20% plunge setting a top benchmark of gloom). But, a confected FT mini-surge apart, there is one great exception. The Times, at 445,000, is up 2% on 2016 – because, yet again, it has piled on bulk free copies, 15,000 of them extra in a month, making a net total of 82,200 giveaway papers every day. What’s the point? Without bulks, the Times would still be just 1.7% down, the best result of any national. To repeat: what’s the point?
Bridget’s third coming
One media statistic will soon be history, so celebrate it while you can. Some 991m cinema tickets were sold in the EU’s 28 (for the moment) states in 2016. That’s a jump of 13.3m on 2015 and the best figure since 2004. Who said Cinema Paradiso’s dead? And while you’re applauding, raise half a sheepish cheer for the biggest-grossing movie shown inside the union that relied on European funding. Count 16.3m tickets for Bridget Jones’s Baby.
