±±¾©Èü³µpk10

Less than six weeks after settling into the managing director’s

chair at The Mail on Sunday, Mike Ironside is overseeing sweeping

changes to the newspaper which could see it go head to head with the

Saturday edition of its sister title, the Daily Mail.

From 7 March, The Mail on Sunday’s TV supplement, Programme, will be

wrapped into the Sunday newspaper’s magazine, Night and Day, beefing up

the supplement’s pagination to around 96 pages for the first issue,

settling down to 84 pages. The newspaper will go up to 128 pages from

July. From 7 March, Family Mail will be replaced by a review section.

The changes aim to make the title appeal to a younger audience.

Ironside refused to comment on the changes, but at the time of his

appointment in December he said: ’People haven’t picked up the baton of

moving The Mail on Sunday on as quickly as they should. It needs a fresh

look from people editorially and commercially to make it succeed.’

In the December round of Audit Bureau of Circulations figures, The Mail

on Sunday was the only Sunday newspaper to notch up an increase of more

than 1 per cent year on year, with a 4 per cent rise. It registered a

December average sale of 2,281,506.

However, the Daily Mail is growing at an even more impressive rate,

clocking up a sales increase of 5 per cent year on year and recording an

average 2,318,287 sales in December.

The Sunday newspaper market is struggling to keep up with that of its

sister daily titles, for which Saturday is one of the best-selling

days.

The pages and sections added to Saturday papers have eaten into Sunday

sales, as readers are more likely to buy just one weekend paper.