1st Edition of the Sun
The 15th of September 1964 AD
Three things that you might not have expected about The Sun as it was launched: its editor (Sydney Jacobson) described it as a radical paper, which it was intended to be; it was a broadsheet; and it was part of the Mirror Group stable.
Though the phrase re-branding would not have been used in 1964, the launch of The Sun was in part such a move: it replaced The Daily Herald which was bleeding money; the new publication claimed political neutrality compared to the Herald’s adherence to the Labour Party; and the designers got to use a nice new logo of the sun.
But the new paper still seemed very old Fleet Street; not a nipple in sight. The original marketing plan failed dismally, so that by 1969 it was up for sale, eventually won by Rupert Murdoch in a fight with Robert Maxwell . Murdoch oversaw a true and rapid rebranding – taking it tabloid and soon adding Page Three Girls - that has seen the paper become not only commercially successful, but a powerful weapon in British politics: when the paper claimed with its famous headline IT’S THE SUN WOT WON IT after John Major ’s unexpected election victory in 1992 it was probably not far wrong. That self-promotion was in keeping with a tradition begun with the very first edition, which ran bigger type for the headline celebrating its own arrival than for the other main front-page story about the 1964 general election campaign.
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