Canada Today

What if the same company that brought us USA Today in the early 1980s published a similar newspaper called Canada Today about the same time? Before you claim that's actually the National Post, I want to clarify: I mean a paper in the same style as USA today: Bright colours, a full page devoted to weather with a colourful map, a daily snippet about each province, etc.

Would this Canada Today have enjoyed the same success USA Today has?
Could this end up spurring a UK Today, an Australia Today, a New Zealand Today, etc. all across the English-speaking world? (I would guess South Africa Today would have to be delayed till the end of apartheid since it would surely have been banned.)

Bump bump bump

I'm not sure anyone would buy it.

If you want a serious 'national' newspaper you can get a Globe and Mail most places, otherwise you go with your local paper.

I never did understand why 'USA Today' took off...

Australia acutually had a national paper launched by a little known newspaper propieter, Rupert Murdoch, called The Australian.
Don't know about NZ
The UK papers are all national. It isn't The Time of London it's just the Times, The Telegraph etc.

Globe and Mail is not a national paper, there is no real "national" paper. Their circulation outside of Central Canada, excluding airline/hotel/etc. packages, is miniscule. The reputation is ill-founded to say the least.

RogueBeaver said:

Globe and Mail is not a national paper, there is no real "national" paper. Their circulation outside of Central Canada, excluding airline/hotel/etc. packages, is miniscule. The reputation is ill-founded to say the least.

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Agreed, to some extent. The Globe, or possibly the National Post which I've never read, is/are the closest approximations, but not close ones.


OTOH, The Globe, certainly, has a 'national' edition without all the Toronto stuff for the rest of the country, and is printed on several local presses. And there's lots of places you can buy the Globe in Saskatchewan, for instance. There's even a few of the vending boxes that sell Globes in e.g. downtown Saskatoon. Admittedly, getting your hands on a copy in Yorkton might be difficult (don't know, never tried), or Foam Lake or Dilke.

Of course, I only go back every 2 years or so, and wasn't looking this summer, so things might have changed. I also don't know what the 'national edition' circulation is compared to e.g. the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, say. I have no doubt that it's tiny compared to the Globe's Toronto distribution.

Heck Dad even got the Globe delivered to his house for a while.

The Globe is pretty prevalent in the urban centes on the west coast. Most news boxes will have it, the NP, the Province(blech), and the Sun or TC.

err there was a Today in the UK in fact it pre dated your US one. It caused the Journalism strikes in the early 80s and was greatly championed by Thatch for breaking the back of the NUJ and the print unions. It introduced the concept of colour into newspapers and digital print setting. US Today was based entirely upon the original UK version which was why the UK one was 'Today' (not UK Today) and the US one put its nationailty into the title.
British newspapers are extremely competitive. There are several types:
Tabloid Redtops-Sun, Mirror, Express. These are mass market, mass appeal, Sun has the lowest readability level using centre alignment, sans serif fonts, no jargon, etc and tits on page 3. Its the paper that came up with the famous 'Gotcha' byeline. Theres also Daily Worker (low circulation and socialist, Daily Sport-mainly full of National Enquirer style 'stories' and LOTS of T&A)
Tabloid whitetop- Daily Mail- again mass market. This is the paper that always seems to have a downer on its own readership. This is the paper with a mainly female readership.
Broadsheets- Times, Telegraph-these are the big two and fairly Conservative in attitude (Telegraph is nicknamed the Torygraph, Daily Mail nicknames include the Daily Facist-obviously it aint), others are the Guardian and the Independent. The Guardian is left leaning.
Theres also The Financial Times-pink in colour and aimed at management and senior business execs.
As well as these there are notable regionals such as The Yorkshire Post, The Scotsman, Evening Standard (London) and The Western Mail.
Most UK papers do Sunday editions too but these have different editors.

As you can see its a tight market and you'd be screwed setting up a new one although that was done recently-a free paper called 'The Metro'.

Aracnid said:

Australia acutually had a national paper launched by a little known newspaper propieter, Rupert Murdoch, called The Australian.
Don't know about NZ
The UK papers are all national. It isn't The Time of London it's just the Times, The Telegraph etc.

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But the UK does still have a lot of local papers too.

USA Today got going partly because of military bases and concentrated American expat communities that were interested in generic US news with little snippets about each state from a not very high-brow perspective and with sports (i.e., not the New York Times). I don't think that Canada has this.