Wednesday 22 April 2009

Flashback '78

Found a Toronto Sun tearsheet from Wednesday, October 4, 1978, with a Page 47 Kevin Scanlon story announcing:

201,585
That's how many Suns you're buying every day.
Thank you!

Scanlon, now at the Toronto Star, wrote:

Well, with your help we did it - the daily Sun has passed the 200,000 circulation mark.

Not bad for a little paper that started as a dream in the nightmare wake of the old Toronto Telegram almost seven years ago.

More nostalgic than the circulation figures 31 years ago were the Norm Betts photos of Ronnie Tonks, one of the Tonks brothers, hauling papers in the pressroom, and a row of vans outside in the loading dock.

Scanlon, Tonks, Betts, the presses, the pressroom and the circulation vans are long gone from 333, as is the giddiness of the 1970s when the sky was the limit at the tabloid.

2 comments:

  1. What is the Sun's circulation these days?

    I'd like to know what every paper's circulation has been since this new redesign. Here in Peterborough we've lost more than 900 paid subscriptions since all the changes (ie. redesign that most senior readers say the print is too small to read, cancelled TV guide listings and changed all the comics)

    Lots of unhappy people here. And that's not including those in the office!

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  2. I can only give a very unscientific version of what I see on the subway every morning: no Suns. Ever.

    I do keep an eye out, but its been months since I've seen one. Today, I counted 1 Star, 1 Globe, 1 Post, a gabillion Metros, and books (not counting the idiots playing solitaire on their cell phones...). But not a single Sun in a car where I could see two dozen people.

    Considering the quality of the printing in last Sunday's paper, I won't be reading it for very long either...

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