Bull Moose on Fleet Street

"This is really the big time," grinned a shrewd, hearty Canadian named Roy Thomson last week. "Have you ever heard of anything bigger?" Few had: Roy Thomson, 65, already owner of 27 papers in Canada, seven in the U.S. and nine in Scotland (plus TV stations on both sides of the Atlantic), had just agreed to pay $14 million for most of Britain's great Kemsley chain, including twelve provincial papers and three Sunday nationals, one of them the Sunday Times.* Combined circulation of Thomson's acquisitions : 14 million.

Victorian Creed. Thomson's entry into the big time marked the retirement of one of the grand old peers of British journalism--James Berry, Viscount Kemsley, 75, who, with his brother William (later Viscount Camrose), came out of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, at the turn of the century, launched Advertising World in 1901, began building a chain that eventually reached a maximum circulation of 24 million (1947). Once called "the greatest debenture salesman in British journalism," Kemsley nevertheless paid close attention to editorial matters, followed a Victorian creed: "I have no intention of competing for circulation by appealing to the appetites of certain sections of the public."

Kemsley, who ended his partnership with his brother in 1937, began selling off chunks of the Kemsley newspaper empire in 1952, when Lord Rothermere bought the Daily Graphic (now the Daily Sketch). Concentrating on his Sunday Times, Kemsley preserved its status as Britain's leading Sunday paper. Wrote the competing Observer last week: "K. has ruled not only as proprietor but as editor in chief . . . His arrival in his Rolls at Kemsley House was awaited with awe: with fine white hair, a slight stoop and a gentle manner, he presided with the deep, resonant voice expected of proprietors, and scarcely a trace of a Welsh accent."

"One Dollar Down." The new lord of the Kemsley chain has a manner about as gentle as that of a bull moose ("I do what I like," he booms. "What I like is running newspapers and TV"). Son of a Toronto barber, Roy Thomson started collecting his fortune when he set up a bush-country radio station, soon took over a bush-country weekly in a fast deal: "One dollar down and chase me for the rest." Like Fleet Street's Lord Beaverbrook, he eventually outgrew Canada, six years ago bought Edinburgh's Scotsman, settled in Scotland, soon had a corner on Scottish commercial TV ("The most beautiful music to me is a spot commercial at ten bucks a whack") and an approved coat of arms. Motto: NEVER A BACKWARD STEP.

Thomson says he will not dictate editorial policy to the Kemsley chain's local editors. But on the business side, Thomson watches his papers with lynx-eyed attention ("I know every cent they spend"), pays salesmen considerably more than reporters, is a master at coaxing revenue and circulation figures upward. With Roy Thomson running the Kemsley chain, Fleet Street is in for some lively times.

*No corporate kin to the daily, stately Times of London.

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