Zoe Bale is Carat's resident print media expert with 14 years experience.

News International has confirmed that The Sun on Sunday is to launch this week, with the first issue dated February 26.

The launch has been hotly tipped since Rupert Murdoch closed the News of the World at the height of the phone-hacking scandal. The only question was – when? This quick turnaround has come as a surprise to many, and could be seen as a coup de main tactic on unaware enemies.

Rather than take a new format the title will be an extension of The Sun, with the same masthead and the same editor, Dominic Mohan. It is essentially a Sunday edition of The Sun, utilising the same staff but with some ‘specialist columnists TBC’.

The newspaper will have a more family orientated tone than its kiss-and-tell heavy predecessor, with strong TV coverage and a female section in the back half of the paper. Sport will continue to feature heavily and there will be a separate ‘Goals’ pullout section.

Although News International is not giving much away in terms of marketing strategies Rupert Murdoch has made it clear he wants his top spot back with an ambition to attract more readers than the NOTW before it closed with a circulation of 2.67m and 7,217, 000 readers.

Expect to see huge TV spend this week, and a price promoted issues for the first few issues.  With the Sunday Mirror, Star On Sunday and Mail on Sunday keen to retain the readers and market share generated from the closure of the NOTW, we anticipate the start of a marketing and price war in the Sunday market.

This is a good thing for the market, which suffers from lack of investment, and could invigorate the declining Sunday sector. More than 800,000 readers retreated from purchasing a Sunday title after the NOTW closed and increased marketing spend in this area will hope to attract them and potentially new readers into the market.   

However it has been seven months since the NOTW closed and its readers have changed their weekly habits, so it will be interesting to see if this launch can re-engage these lost readers and bring them back into the market.

Although we know there will be stiff resistance, all competitors are being very secretive with their own retaliation plans.  Northern & Shell have the advantage of owning Channel 5 and consequently we will see vast amounts of Star of Sunday activity on the channel this week.

With the Leveson enquiry still going on, News International isn’t out of the woods yet but whatever you think of Murdoch you have to admire his fighting spirit. The Sun on Sunday may be just the tonic needed to re-energise the flagging newspaper market.