Though the Financial Times has been having success with circulation, it is "refreshing" its weekend paper this weekend to increase sales, especially on Sundays.

Andrew Neil, editor of the Sunday Times from 1983 to 1994, had transformed the paper to have several sections in order to dominate weekend sales, but he now feels that "market people are beginning to feel that there is too much froth on a Sunday."

FT Weekend editor Andy Davis oversaw the paper's reorganization and redesign. Book reviews will move from the magazine back to the newspaper in the Life & Arts section, the "Lunch with the FT" interview section will also move to the Life & Arts section, and the main news section will be merged with Companies & Markets. House & Home and Money will be redesigned A new magazine, FT Weekend Magazine, and new columnists, such as Merryn Somerset Webb from the Sunday Times who will write a column about personal finance, will also be included.

"We can create something new and exciting in terms of our color magazine because we think it is slightly under-powered. The key is photojournalism," says FT's editor Lionel Barber. He says that the word count for articles will be decreased so that the photos will speak for themselves.

The weekend FT is more popular than its weekday counterpart, selling 30% more copies, according to industry estimates, and it raised its price to £2 earlier this year.

"It's a big market, the weekend market," Barber says. "That's why we are calling it the FT Weekend. We think we can get a bigger slice on the Saturday and a little bit on a Sunday. I am not suggesting that the FT is going head to head with the larger Sunday newspapers, but at the margins we can nibble ferociously."

Alan Brydon, head of press at the media buying agency Media Planning Group, questions whether the paper will pick up many more sales on a Sunday. "Habit and human nature have a lot of play in our world and I just don't think people will think of the FT as a Sunday paper. The topicality has to be an issue."

Barber responds, "How much news in a Sunday paper happens on a Saturday?"

Source: Guardian.co.uk