When next week’s Radio Times landed on the doormat I felt a slight sense of déjà vu. This was only resolved when I looked at the pile of newspapers from last week ready for recycling and saw David Tennant’s face staring back at me again.
Two covers in three weeks does seem a bit excessive. But five minutes searching on t’interweb threw up another three covers from the past twelve months – and I’ve probably missed a few on top of that.
Has the Radio Times correlated a sales uplift with a certain actor as cover star?
I’d say that was a good guess. TV mag sales are quite sensitive to who goes on the cover so I’d imagine Mr Tennant is pretty popular with those mideel-England RT readers :)
The answer to this may be in the last episode of the brilliant Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe. He had a special where he interviewed several TV writers. One of them was Russell T Davies (not that Russell Davies) – the writer of Dr Who, and he said that he’d never written stuff before with the audience in mind besides Dr Who. He had to with Dr Who because he knows the audience can be anyone. i.e. It has a mssivively diverse audience. What this also means from a magazing cover POV is that it’s desirable to more. It’s all about the sales…