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Relaunched Saturday Times drops cover price by 50p

By Paul McNally

The Times has announced it is cutting the price of its revamped Saturday edition by 50p from this weekend for a limited period.

The cut – from £1.50 to £1 – will be supported by a TV, radio and poster campaign and free sample copies of the new paper will be handed out in Marks and Spencer, Pizza Express, Picture House and the National Theatre.

The Times unveiled its new-look Saturday edition on 24 January, spread across six sections and edited by Eleanor Mills.

The changes include a new separate sport section, a broadsheet culture and arts supplement called The Review and a revamped magazine.

The Travel and Body and Soul sections were merged into a new Weekend pullout, and a new pocket-sized listings guide, Playlist, similar in size to the Guardian Guide was launched.

Writing in the Times on Saturday, the paper’s feedback editor Sally Baker accepted that it would take readers some time to adjust to the changes.

‘Next time we change The Times I am asking the editor for a month’s notice so I can leave the country. Alternatively he could just shoot me first,’she wrote.

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‘To give you an idea of the postbag, at the time of writing I have read some 700 feedback emails, the letters editor has seen about 400, the editor’s office has fielded 350 and 200 have been submitted online.

‘Now the posted ones are starting to arrive too – but we are reading them all and we are listening.”

Baker added: ‘Doing nothing is not an option for a newspaper which, while attaching enormous value to the exacting standards of our loyal existing readers, must constantly attract new ones in an age of fierce competition from other media.

‘The Times has been at the forefront of innovation for 224 years, and we must continue to evolve, and to hope that our readers will come with us.”

Times editor James Harding: ‘We have redesigned the Saturday Times to give people the best possible newspaper for the weekend.

‘We offer now the most enjoyable, the most illuminating and the most useful package of papers on a Saturday.

‘We want as many people to know that the paper has changed and the best way to do this is to get it into their hands.”

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