Thomson Takes the Times

Lord Thomson of Fleet, Toronto-born owner of 125 newspapers and 150 magazines from the Austin Daily Herald to the Bangkok Post, has long sought one crowning jewel: a major London daily. The Times of London, a paper of rich tradition but modest circulation (286,000), has long needed one sterling resource: money. Last week the British press lord got together with the Establishment's most authoritative daily (motto: "For Top People") in a deal that brings new prestige to 72-year-old Thomson and fresh power to the 181 -year-old Times.

If Britain's Monopolies Commission approves as expected, the stodgy, money-losing Times will quickly merge with Thomson's meaty, immensely profitable Sunday Times (circ.: 1,360,320) to form Times Newspapers Ltd. No cash will change hands, but Roy Thomson, whose empire is already worth $300 million, will get 85% of the stock. The remaining 15% will go to Gavin Astor, 48, current scion of the Astor family, which has owned the Times for the past 44 years. He thus gets a stake in a far stronger corporation and becomes its lifetime president.

"Absolute Freedom." Neither Thomson nor Astor will completely control the eleven-man board, which will hire and fire editors. It will consist of the editor in chief, the general manager, two Astor men, three Thomson men, and--at the fulcrum--four "independent national figures" to be approved by both partners. Though Thomson will not be on the board, his son, Kenneth, 43, will be vice chairman. Said Thomson, who, like the U.S.'s Sam Newhouse, reads balance sheets much more avidly than editorial pages: "All my life, I have believed in the independence of editors, and the new editor in chief has been guaranteed absolute freedom from interference."

In the shuffle, Sir William Haley, 65, the Times's austere, scholarly editor since 1952, will move up to board chairman; the editor in chief of both the daily and Sunday editions will be Thomson's man, Denis Hamilton, 47, a brilliant, tough-minded journalist who has never feared the boss. In five years as editor of the Sunday Times, Hamilton has doubled circulation by adding a much-imitated color supplement and greatly improving the paper's parliamentary, foreign and cultural coverage--all superior to the daily Times's.

More of the same can be expected for the daily, which has lost a lot of its old thunder, although circulation has increased 10% in the five months since it began putting news instead of agony ads on Page One. Hamilton plans to "crossbreed" his daily and Sunday staffs into a seven-day operation. The Times, he says, "needs a vast amount of money so we can increase coverage. It needs more pages and more correspondents, and that is what it will get."

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