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Newsweek rose nearly 100 pages to 3,008. I guess this is one of the first signs. I'll read you something else--this is from Prendergast. “A basic decision had been made in TIME's circulating policy to hold at the 4,250,000 level reached in 1970. Since 1952 TIME's write base had gone up every year, etcetera etcetera. TIME was in fact nearing the situation that LIFE had faced of pricing itself out of the market against television, which could for the same dollars” and blah, blah, blah, blah. So TIME I guess decided at that point to hold its circulation level. According to Prendergast this left an obvious opportunity for Newsweek, which was then at 2,725,000 circulation, to narrow the lead--which apparently it didn't do right at that point. I just wanted to refresh your memory on some things.

How would you describe the whole competition with Newsweek?

There was a continuous jockeying. Newsweek had one advantage all along. That is, it had more pass along circulation than TIME did. As t.v. grew, the audience figures became more important than the circulation figures in a lot of advertisers' minds, because that's how they measured t.v.. So TIME was always at a comparative disadvantage to Newsweek. But as far as actual circulation rates and pages were concerned, it was a continuous see-saw with Newsweek becoming better editorially and maybe TIME not improving at all. That would result in more acceptance in advertising terms. Then Kay Graham, God bless her, would fire the editor-in-chief, or the publisher, then Newsweek would go in to a slump and TIME, when it was wise, would take advantage of that slump