Scottish Daily News - Broadsheet

Broadsheet

The first 16-page edition of the newspaper rolled off the presses as a broadsheet, as the Scottish Daily Express had been, at 9:50 p.m. on 4 May 1975, under the editorship of Fred Sillito, with Andrew McCallum as news editor, and 500 employee-shareholders. The journalists, based on the third floor of the Albion Street building, agreed to take a basic £69 a week salary and the editor £150 (McKay and Barr 1976, p.70). Dorothy-Grace Elder, who in 1999 became one of the first members (MSP) of the new Scottish Parliament, became the editor of the women's section. The first issue sold out at over 300,000 copies.

Although the broadsheet format was at the time believed by many employees to be a mistake, as reports had shown that the Scottish public preferred the tabloid format, the action committee, now called the executive council or works council, confidently expected circulation to fall to 220,000 within three weeks as the novelty of the newspaper wore off (ibid, p. 71). However, circulation dropped further and faster than expected, reaching 190,000 in the third week. After taking returns into account, this produced an actual sales figures of less than 180,000, which meant that the newspaper had started to lose money.

According to Christopher Hird in the New Internationalist, a feasibility study conducted by Strathclyde University before the paper started indicated that the average daily sale needed to be 200,000 to break even, and that the venture could not work given the costs and expected sales.

After the capital costs were taken into account, writes Hird, the company had been started with just £950,000, a relatively small amount to launch a new paper.