Is 25-Year-Old Kate Middleton The Financial Salvation Of The UK National Tabloids?

This is very big, very important business for the tabloids. Their future livelihoods could depend on it. The longer Prince William draws out the time until he proposes to the girl (the betting is that it happens some time this year) and the longer the actual engagement, the longer the tabloids will be in picture heaven. Probably your local newspaper has a picture of Kate Middleton today – Tuesday was her 25th birthday.

Some paparazzi pictures are already selling for around £20,000 – Kate got handed a parking ticket the other day – that was the ultimate -- and the longer the circus continues the more exclusivity will cost. William and Kate, for instance, were snapped last week leaving a London nightclub – that’s paparazzi heaven.

Why is all of this so important to the tabloids – even the new compacts and the broadsheets? Because royalty sells newspapers big-time! It did with Diana and it is already doing so with Kate. And not just in the UK. Newspapers and magazines from around the world – Australia to the US—are clamoring for more and more Kate pix. Who is this girl who could well be the future queen of England? Enquiring minds want to know and see!

ftm background

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In the UK when one talks about the “quality” press it is synonymous with the broadsheets. Does that mean the 216-year-old Times is no longer a quality newspaper? Rupert Murdoch, who made his newspaper fortune with tabloids, now has one more in his stable. He has turned The Times “compact” (that’s tabloid to you and me!)

Since Diana died in that Paris crash the tabloids have never been able to find a substitute who could bring in so many readers every day. It’s why whenever they can they still scrounge around looking for good reasons to run Diana stories. Now that the UK’s official inquest into her death is about to begin they again have the opportunity to get her magic name in banner headlines. And to be able to run stories and pictures comparing Diana with Kate – those are opportunities no editor is about to pass up.

And getting the right picture can really impact circulation. When the Daily Mirror in 2005 ran, as the tabloid described it, “shocking pictures of supermodel Kate Moss snorting a fat line of cocaine during a debauched drugs and drink session with junkie lover Pete Doherty” it is said to have added over 1 million to its circulation, before dropping back to normal readership numbers when the series had ended.

In other words the newspaper that has that day’s exclusive rules the roost. And that is how important Kate Middleton is to the tabloids today. Just look at the 2006 circulation figures. According to the latest November ABCs, The Sun, the largest circulation daily with 3,072,828 saw its circulation drop to the lowest level in 20 years. It’s just a matter of how many months it will take (unless Kate changes things) for circulation to drop below the magic 3 million figure. The Daily Mirror lost 50,000 readers in November and is now down to 1.55 million daily. The November drop was equal to 3.18%, and the paper is down 7.32% for the year. The Daily Mail lost 2.37% in November and The Daily Express dropped 1.78%.

For the Sundays the story is even worse.The People’s 3.12% drop in November means it is down a whopping 12.18% on the year. The News of The World, the UK’s largest circulation newspaper is down to 3,415,372 – was it really that many years ago it was above 5 million? It has lost 317,000 circulation in the past 12 months. The Sunday Mirror has lost 6.2% over the past 12 months – down 3.09% just in November,

All of these newspapers desperately search for the exclusive that builds circulation and all will concentrate on Kate. But The Sun and The News of The World, both owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News International, have announced they are taking the high road – they are not going to buy Kate’s paparazzi pictures and instead will depend upon their own photographers. So it still means Kate gets stalked, but instead of spending big money on paparazzi pictures, those Murdoch newspapers hope they can do the job themselves.

Indeed there was a big hue and cry during Diana’s times that the paparazzi situation had gotten impossible. There were calls for the media to stop using paparazzi and for readers not to buy publications that used paparazzi pictures. The media basically responded that as long as the public thirsts for those paparazzi pictures then they will continue to buy them in.

So, will the other tabloids join with News International not to use the paparazzi or will they just see this as an added incentive to buy in what they can knowing the competition won’t have those exact same pictures?

And for the paparazzi the real way to make money is not so much newspapers but rather magazines. Exclusive sales in each country are worth into six figures. Even in the UK, how much will Hello or OK! pay for that exclusive cover? It will be worth more if it didn’t appear in a daily newspaper.

The UK’s Press Complaints Commission (PCC) drew up paparazzi rules after Diana’s death. The voluntary code says, “It is unacceptable to photograph individuals in private places without their consent. Private places are public or private property where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

So is leaving the house every morning and driving to work a “reasonable expectation of privacy”? The paparazzi are camped outside Kate’s home and cameras are thrust in her face as she walks out the door to her car. When she gets to work more paparazzi are set up to receive her. It has all gotten so bad that Soctland Yard has now assigned 12 protection officers to her.

Technically, she’s a private person who doesn’t rate special protection but there are few members of the British public, except perhaps for the paparazzi, who don’t believe the poor girl, who was not brought up to be in the limelight, needed help.

Tim Toulmin, PCC director, said, “This young woman is not the fiancé of Prince William or somebody who has chosen to be a celebrity. She is the girlfriend of Prince William, with no constitutional position, and is entitled to her privacy as anyone else.”

Lawyers for Prince Charles, William’s father, have written to editors asking they go easy on Kate. If it does happen it is only temporary. The competition is too fierce. Former royal press secretary Dickie Arbiter says, “What is happening outside her home at the moment is totally unreasonable.”

William met Kate when they were both attending Scotland’s St. Andrews University. They have been 'romantically involved’ going on holidays together, even sharing an apartment at one time since William invited her to the university’s water polo ball at Christmas 2003.

In the UK the betting houses take wagers on just about anything. One online betting shop is offering 4-5 odds that Kate will be engaged to William by the time she turns 26, 3-1 that she will be married to William within the year and 6-1 she’ll have a royal baby by the time she turns 30.

Daily Mirror Apologizes To Kate – April 10, 2007

With tabloid newspapers desperate for anything exclusive to boost circulation, the UK’s Daily Mirror printed a rather innocuous picture a couple of weeks back of Kate Middleton, Prince William’s girl friend, walking to work. So what’s newsworthy about that, and hadn’t the media been warned that when the woman was going about her daily business there would be no specific public interest in following her and taking her picture?

But for reasons best known to themselves the Daily Mirror printed the paparazzi picture, and Kate got really mad and issued a harassment complaint with the Press Complaints Commission. The Mirror quickly saw the error of its ways and issued a near-immediate apology for running the picture.

And now Kate has withdrawn her complaint, saying the Mirror’s apology was satisfactory.

The Commission also reiterated its advice that photographers should stop publishing pictures taken in circumstances when the subject has asked them to stop snapping away, and there is no “obvious public interest for persisting.”

Not so lucky, however, is another “queen” of the paparazzi, Victoria Beckham. France’s M6 television on Sunday night showed a documentary about paparazzi in Hollywood and Victoria is one of their favorite hunts. Just being driven from a shop to visit a friend’s residence in Los Angeles resulted in paparazzi cars smashing into one another and the drivers brawling in the middle of the street; walking out of the Los Angeles airport has so much continuous camera flash that one wonders whether she couldn’t sue for eye damage, dark glasses or not.