An unashamedly populist TV supplement and a new football pullout have been revealed as the Daily Mirror’s new Saturday package.
We Love Telly! replaces the more upmarket M magazine and The Look listings supplement which were both scrapped with the loss of 28 jobs.
The editor of the magazine is former editor of Loaded and Chat Keith Kendrick. Former TV Times editor Peter Genower is editorial consultant and former editor of TV & Satellite Week, Sue Rylance, is listings consultant.
The football pullout is called Mirror Football Con?dential and will comprise 16 pages of stories, interviews, statistics and analysis.
Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey came to the company from IPC in February and is understood to have quickly identi?ed a good listings magazine as important to Saturday sales. Bailey was previously managing director of the listings division at IPC.
We Love Telly! has been developed by Trinity Mirror editorial development director Phil Hall, formerly editor of Hello! and the News of the World.
It will have 56 pages and, as well as seven-day TV listings, will include content based around TV characters and plots rather than celebrities.
Mirror editor Piers Morgan said: “This is a very exciting new magazine designed to re-energise our Saturday paper. It is staffed by a brilliant team of people, led by Keith Kendrick, who are passionate about television.
“That passion radiates through We Love Telly! and I have no doubt that it will be a massive hit with Mirror readers.”
Hall said: “We Love Telly! is a celebration of television, combining the best of TV news, listings, trivia, puzzles and competitions.
“We researched the market very hard to ?nd out what readers were looking for, and responded to their views. The focus of We Love Telly! is very much on delivering what matters to our readers.”
The launch of the new magazines follows Bailey’s announcement two weeks ago that there would be no return to the more serious news agenda pursued by the paper last year.
Instead, she said, the Mirror would concentrate on “seriously good popular journalism”.
This was followed by news last week that the posts of education and health correspondents were being scrapped at the paper.
M magazine won the British Press Awards supplement of the year in 2000 and was believed to cost Trinity Mirror £9m a year to produce. When announcing its closure, a spokesman for the company said: “M magazine does not produce an adequate return on our investment.”
By Dominic Ponsford
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