The classic publisher’s response to declining performance of a magazine or newspaper is to ignore the content – most don’t understand a word of the content of what they publish anyway but change the way the thing looks (well yes, apart from having a lot more in it, the paper version of Computergram does look very little different from the first edition in August 1984) and the disease seems to have infected Belgium’s Regie des Telegraphes & Telephones: rather than fix the fact that the average wait for a new line is 57 days, and 15% of would-be subscribers have to wait more than three months, it has decided to change its name – but would you really have more confidence in something that called itself by the current favoured name Belgacom?
