This film is part of Free

Yorkshire Post Advert

Headlining with the expulsion of South Africa from the Olympics in 1970, the Yorkshire Post sells itself as much more than a local paper.

1970

From the collection of:

Logo for Yorkshire Film Archive

Overview

Just as Prince Charles is about to open its new brutalist headquarters on Wellington Street in Leeds, in December 1970, one of Britain’s oldest newspapers, the Yorkshire Post, embarks on a series of television advertisements. Strongly promoting itself as a national newspaper, the ads often use well-known national actors. This is a no frills advert: a Yorkshire advert for a Yorkshire paper for Yorkshire folk.

The Yorkshire Post was founded in 1754 as the Leeds Intelligencer, and has been published daily under its present name since 1866. The opening shot might be a bit puzzling to a younger generation of Leeds locals, as both the Liverpool Victoria building in the background and the high rise building with the restaurant have since been replaced by more modern buildings. The Yorkshire Post too has also recently, in 2012, moved into a new building on Whitehall Road. At its peak it sold more than 120,000 copies a day, which by 2012 had been reduced to 40,000; and while a third of all advertising went to the regional press in the 1970s, this has since sharply declined.