IT IS time for the BBC to stop messing around and launch a newspaper. Why not? With 11 daily newspapers coming out of London alone, the reader must be under-served. After all, the BBC has its own news website. So a print version is only a logical brand extension — perhaps not even a new “service” of the kind that Governors have to approve.

Think imaginatively and canny BBC executives could think of more justifications. Each daily newspaper has its own political slant, so perhaps what the reader needs is the meaningless “on the one hand, on the other” school of journalism instead. And, why should readers pay for a newspaper when the BBC could provide it free via the licence fee? What prompts this particular rant is speculation that the Beeb is contemplating launching a weekly news magazine linked to Newsnight and Panorama. The idea may be coming out of the BBC’s commercial arm, but these days magazines are meant to be programmerelated, and while they can’t be promoted on air, simply using a familar brand or star names is cross-promotion enough.

Meanwhile, it is hardly clear that the market for serious weeklies is in crisis. The Economist, The Spectator and the New Statesman cater for most tastes already, and all, the New Statesman included, are profitable. Yet they would face a genuine challenge from a half- decent BBC title. Cross- media regulations prevent the introduction of commercially sponsored news or current affairs programmes — but a BBC title, such as Smash Hits killer Top of the Pops, can draw upon its own familar brands because it is going about it the other way round.

It does not really matter that this initiative is coming out of the BBC’s commercial arm (it is often forgotten that BBC Worldwide, the profit-making bit, is Britain’s third-biggest publisher of consumer magazines). Once again the latest wheeze demonstrates that the Corporation, which would be nothing without the licence fee at its core, seems to have no sense of limit.

So, with that thought in mind, a BBC newspaper is surely the next logical step.

• The New Statesman, meanwhile, completed its own redesign last week, bringing a badly needed luxurious look to the previously dowdy title. For years the Statesman seemed content only to provide a service to a small band of apparently humourless fellow travellers, from the lonely left flank of the Labour Party.

  John Kampfner, Editor since last year, though, brings a new energy, recognising that a weekend read such as the Statesman has to be more than just a specialist interest if it is to retain the readers who otherwise have plenty of better things to do on Saturday and Sunday. Rory Bremner, who already writes a column, is one of the best-read parts of the weekly, and now readers are being given Julian Clary too.

  There is also an attempt to broaden the political appeal, although this should not be exaggerated. The weekly is aimed at the “liberal radical” interested in politics in its broadest sense. Last week’s relaunch issue came with a David Cameron interview, rather than the Tony Blair that normally comes with every newspaper redesign.

  Kampfner also insists that he and Geoffrey Robinson, the owner, never discuss the content of the title ahead of publication; apparently the Brownite MP never asks, and the Editor never tells. But Robinson has agreed to invest modestly, and the result is that circulation is close to hitting 30,000. So, just as the Statesman threatens to emerge from its long, miserable torpor, it would only be fair if the BBC did something about that.

• EMI has got Warner Music roughly where it wanted it; since the British company confessed that it had made a bid, its stock is roughly unchanged at 270p, while Warner Music has come back 10 per cent. At $25.30 yesterday morning Warner sits somewhat under EMI’s $28.50 tilt. That’s probably about as low as Warner is going to go, unless James Blunt or Madonna announces they can’t be bothered to produce new material.

  Eric Nicoli, EMI’s amiable boss, has demonstrated that he’s not going to be pushed into rapidly escalating the price, but at some point he’s got to try to complete this deal, which generates so many cost savings (bad news for drunken A&R men and uptight copyright lawyers on either side) that they are worth £160 million a year. And the longer Nicoli waits, the more he risks another EMI blow-up, when Coldplay’s Chris Martin decides that shareholders really are the evil of the modern world.

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