The long-awaited new lesson 12 of the current edition of the CC has at last been completed — and it "covers the waterfront"! It deals with Christianity as a way of life, the weekly and annual sabbaths, tithing, overcoming and various aspects of soteriology. It's at least twice the thickness of a normal lesson. I'm sending it to press right away and it should be available in about 6 weeks. This will take a load off Mail Processing as they have been sending "lit-out" letters on it for several months.
The cover of the May PT should be a winner. Mr. Ted Armstrong approved it yesterday. It was done by Jack Davis, an internationally known cartoonist who has done a number of covers for Time magazine. It depicts Pierre Trudeau and Rene Levesque pulling apart a maple leaf (Canada's national symbol). Should really be a winner.
I'd like to take a little space to explain the psychology of some of our new covers. According to a telephone survey Larry Nelson has been conducting on PT readers, we still have a rather "old" audience. The average age of the Plain Truth reader is 52. Our basic appeal has been to the older, more conservative elements in the country (U.S.). Yet, in the United States, it is estimated that some SO percent of the Population is under 30! Those over 65 represent about 10 percent. The people who watch religious television shows number about 6 percent of the population. So you can see that our appeal is rather limited and limiting.
We are hoping that the modernization of the PT graphic image Will help attract a younger, more flexible reading audience. We would like to see more young marrieds on our list and more single people. The whole list needs revitalizing. We are hoping that the use of more dramatic, attractive covers with "now" themes will help accomplish this.