Does the internet give newspapers and magazine a better chance to compete against television and radio?

ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA This evening and early tomorrow morning, as most of Australia sleeps, journalists at the Australian Women's Weekly will be working hard getting together 40 pages of pictures and text about the wedding of William and Kate. These pages will be inserted into the May issue, which would normally be on sale by now. But ACP Magazines know of their readers' appetite for a British royal wedding and have held back publication until Wednesday 4 May.

The Australian Women's Weekly is actually a monthly that started life as a weekly. But when it changed its frequency of publication, it was thought indelicate to change the title accordingly. Consequently, holding the May issue was the sensible thing to do as waiting until June would miss the boat.

Executive editor Juliet Rieden will watch the coverage at her Sydney home before driving to ACP Magazines' office to oversee the putting together of Australian Women's Weekly. Coverage here is Sydney starts at 6.00pm, which is 9.00am in London. By breakfast time on Saturday, the issue will be put to bed and being on its way to the printer.

None of this would have been possible when the groom's parents married. Theirs was a wedding that the world watched on television. (The bride's parents did not command an audience greater than family and friends.) It is thanks to the internet that pictures and text can be beamed across the world in seconds. This affords newspapers and magazines to compete by making their more permanent product available soon after the event.

The appetite for royal coverage in Australia strong. Almost every newspaper and magazine has devoted acres of newsprint to the event for the past three or four weeks. Television and radio has also offered saturation coverage. Royalty is big business here as much as it is in the UK…maybe more so.

The Australian Women's Weekly is 78 years old and has been Australia's best-selling title for most of that time. At one time it was the world's top seller on a per capita basis.