The Times is a daily national newspaper published in the United Kingdom since 1785 when it was known as The Daily Universal Register.

The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of News International. News International is entirely owned by the News Corporation group, headed by Rupert Murdoch. Though traditionally a moderately centre-right newspaper and a supporter of the Conservatives, it supported the Labour party in the 2001 and 2005 general elections. In 2005, according to MORI, the voting intentions of its readership were 40% for the Conservative Party, 29% for the Liberal Democrats, 26% for Labour.

The Times is the original "Times" newspaper, lending its name to many other papers around the world, such as The New York Times, The Times of India, The Straits Times, The Times of Malta and The Irish Times For specificity it is sometimes referred to as the London Times or The Times of London. The paper is the originator of the ubiquitous Times Roman typeface, originally developed by Stanley Morison of The Times in collaboration with the Monotype Corporation for its legibility in low-tech printing.

The newspaper was printed in broadsheet format for 219 years, but switched to compact size in 2004 partly in an attempt to appeal to younger readers and partly to appeal to commuters using public transport. An American edition has been published since June 6, 2006.

Today

The newspaper's cover price in the United Kingdom is 90p on weekdays (30p for students at some university campus shops) and £1.50 on Saturday. The Times' sister paper, The Sunday Times, is a broadsheet and priced at £2.00. Although The Times and The Sunday Times are both owned by News International, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp, they do not share editorial staff, were founded independently and have only shared the same owner since 1967. In November 2006 The Times began printing headlines in its new font, Times Modern.

Circulation

The certified average circulation figures for November 2005 show that The Times sold 692,581 copies per day. This was the highest achieved under the last editor, Robert Thomson, and ensured that the newspaper remained ahead of The Daily Telegraph in terms of full rate sales, although The Daily Telegraph remains the market leader for broadsheets, with a circulation of 905,955 copies. Tabloid newspapers, such as The Sun and middle-market newspapers such as the Daily Mail, at present outsell both papers with a circulation of around 3,274,855 and 2,353,807 respectively.

History