Media: Perspective - Telegraph can only benefit from Times going fully compact.

Max Hastings, the former editor of The Daily Telegraph, once said that the majority of letters from readers were composed by people who are 'not entirely sane'.

In that case, The Times' editor, Robert Thomson, shouldn't worry about some of the anti-compact venom exhibited on his paper's letters page this week following its decision to drop its broadsheet format.

'I feel sad at a change which robs The Times of its civilised spaciousness,' Francis Bennion of Budleigh Salterton opined. 'Good God! I shall never get over this. Time for a snifter or two,' John Walker of Norwich raged.

In reality, Times Newspapers was never going to let the outmoded feelings of a minority of its readers (less than 30 per cent of its audience were clinging to the broadsheet by the end) get in the way of a hard business decision.

The costs of printing a compact and broadsheet in tandem were prohibitive, dealing with media agencies was complicated and the title's position in the market was unclear.

And while The Times has bucked the downward circulation trend in the newspaper market, its sales increases since the compact launch have not been as spectacular as The Independent's. Its September sales were up 4.5 per cent year on year to 660,906, but the word was that Rupert Murdoch wasn't entirely happy with its performance.

In the UK for a week in mid-September, mainly to finalise plans for a relocation of ...