Peter Wright, editor of the Mail on Sunday, gives the audience a flavour of the massive news coverage the paper's Prince CD giveaway generated earlier this year.
That giveaway, when the paper distributed a previously unreleased CD, was massive. It gave the MoS the highest circulation it had enjoyed since day after Princess Diana's funeral. Wright said the sales soared because readers thought the CD was something "groundbreaking and newsworthy".
Wright is a defender of CD giveaways, recalling a comment that Daily Mirror editor Richard Wallace made to a recent parliamentary select committee that "CD and DVDs are the cocaine of the industry".
Wright politely rubbishes this, pointing out that the commercial USP of newspapers is no longer the delivery of news - because now anyone can do it by setting up an internet site.
"Any editor that believes that he can sell his newspaper entirely on news and that CDs and DVDs are embarrassments imposed on him by his marketing department will not succeed."
Wright points to the great strengths of newspapers - they are a cultural package put together by a "remarkable collection of people with fingers on the pulse".
Papers also have a unique position as a delivery network. "No-one else can deliver CDs to millions of homes at a cost which is a fraction of postal delivery."
"Any editor who want to be here in 2020 has to be thinking what he can add to his polybag that will prove attractive to his reader."
