It seems a bizarre trip down memory lane in a time of digital present and digital futures. Dear old Dickie Desmond cuts the price of his Star print stable in half from tomorrow. Your Daily Star at 20p, not 40p; your Saturday edition at 30p, not 60p; and your bumper Star on Sunday for a mere 50p. Newsagents wail that all this makes Dickie’s downmarket selection too measly to be worth handling. Most of the market seems neither shaken nor stirred. Desmond has lopped cover prices in the past and gained only temporary advantage. History will surely repeat itself again now.
And yet there’s cause to pause here, at least for a moment. Many things have contributed to print’s slumping circulation figures (down 11.4% and 12.6% in the past year for Stars weekday and Sunday). One, of course, is free news and free pin-ups on the net; another is a changing pattern of work-day life that simply leaves no time for print. But the whole austerity pantheon – from £2.70 for a week-day Financial Times down – has a role in this sob story, too. Will the hard-working families hymned at every party conference carry on paying £2.80 a week for the whole Mirror package when one Desmond pound will cover the lot? Has a £1 Sun on Sunday nothing to fear from a 50p Star?
The answer, of course, is that there will be shifts – small or a bit larger – here. The old game may still be worth a spin in the continuing world of supermarket bargain offers, and playing it again sends a wider message right up the scale to that FT mountain peak. Price isn’t some defunct, departed market force. Price is part of every equation.
