Word: thomson
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...audience. "Some of these composers," said Corriere della Sera severely, "falsified their music to please the children. That means they have sold their souls to the devil, which disqualifies them to write for the innocent." The final word was left to elegant, 62-year-old Composer-Critic Virgil Thomson. "I have no opinion on this performance," said he, "because I think Venice is not for children anyway and can only be appreciated when one is over 70 years...
...This is really the big time," grinned a shrewd, hearty Canadian named Roy Thomson last week. "Have you ever heard of anything bigger?" Few had: Roy Thomson, 65, already owner of 27 papers in Canada, seven in the U.S. and nine in Scotland (plus TV stations on both sides of the Atlantic), had just agreed to pay $14 million for most of Britain's great Kemsley chain, including twelve provincial papers and three Sunday nationals, one of them the Sunday Times.* Combined circulation of Thomson's acquisitions : 14 million...
Victorian Creed. Thomson's entry into the big time marked the retirement of one of the grand old peers of British journalism-James Berry, Viscount Kemsley, 75, who, with his brother William (later Viscount Camrose), came out of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, at the turn of the century, launched Advertising World in 1901, began building a chain that eventually reached a maximum circulation of 24 million (1947). Once called "the greatest debenture salesman in British journalism," Kemsley nevertheless paid close attention to editorial matters, followed a Victorian creed: "I have no intention of competing for circulation by appealing...
...Dollar Down." The new lord of the Kemsley chain has a manner about as gentle as that of a bull moose ("I do what I like," he booms. "What I like is running newspapers and TV"). Son of a Toronto barber, Roy Thomson started collecting his fortune when he set up a bush-country radio station, soon took over a bush-country weekly in a fast deal: "One dollar down and chase me for the rest." Like Fleet Street's Lord Beaverbrook, he eventually outgrew Canada, six years ago bought Edinburgh's Scotsman, settled in Scotland, soon...
...Thomson says he will not dictate editorial policy to the Kemsley chain's local editors. But on the business side, Thomson watches his papers with lynx-eyed attention ("I know every cent they spend"), pays salesmen considerably more than reporters, is a master at coaxing revenue and circulation figures upward. With Roy Thomson running the Kemsley chain, Fleet Street is in for some lively times...