Yesterday Rupert Murdoch proudly tweeted that the first edition of his new Sun on Sunday had sold 3m copies.
How many of those purchases will turn out to be driven by curiosity, or a desire to have a copy of the first of something, will become evident once the settle down sales figure becomes established.
And, as was apparent by the number of added goodies and free this-or-that offers peppering the other Sunday tabloids, News International's rivals are not going to give Rupert et al an easy ride.
A special prize for price misdirection of the week goes to Richard Desmond's Sunday Express, which had a huge 30p emblazoned on the front page, with "cheaper than the Mail on Sunday" underneath in small print.
Of course I bought a copy of the Sunday Sun. And I laughed out loud at the "suitably-demure-for-a-Sunday" variant of page three.
What I did find extremely interesting was a small detail that indicates just what a seat-of-the-pants decision it was to launch the paper with what seemed like almost no notice.
My copy of the accompanying Fabulous magazine had "Free with The Sun February 25 2012" on the front cover. The 25th being, erm, Saturday, obviously.
Fabulous was a very successful News of the World supplement, and it has been repurposed into the Saturday Sun during the interim period between the NoTW closure and launch of the Sun on Sunday.
This leaves me to conclude that the decision to press the
go button on the Sunday newspaper was so close to the wire, it was too late for anyone to do anything about the magazine's print
schedule. Still, this date-related snippet might make a future print pub quiz question.
