The first quarter century of the colour supplements

Richard Eyre

A brief history of the colour supplements, which also started 25 years or so ago. The article describes how they spread beyond the quality nationals across all newspapers, following very different editorial approaches, and discusses the effects they have had, and may have in future, on their parent titles.

The First Quarter-Century of the Colour Supplements

Richard Eyre Bartle Bogle Hegarty

When Brian Braithwaite – the Robert Morley of the media business – described colour supplements as ‘the publishing equivalent of airline food’, I was there. The occasion was the first ‘Magazine Marketplace’ presentation, when the magazine proprietors managed to stop squabbling amongst themselves long enough to book the conference hall at Centrepoint, and everyone was there.

I remember it because Brian went on to describe the media buying fraternity as ‘a bunch of 17 year old horse-thieves armed with calculators’. I was so incensed that...

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