The Toronto Star's Sunday edition is getting ready to unveil a new look and the National Post already has, but both papers deny they'll be jumping on the tabloid bandwagon, says a Globe and Mail article.

An excerpt:

The Toronto Star is relaunching its Sunday newspaper in January, but has resisted the temptation to shift the edition to a tabloid format.

The National Post, however, appears to be adopting a tabloid-like style, at least on its front page, as a new publisher with a background in tab papers takes control of the national broadsheet.

The changes come as rumours swirl in Canada's media community about which major broadsheet publication will be the first to shift to a tabloid format. The talk has been inflamed by the transformation of several major British newspapers into tabloids -- a move that has revitalized circulation numbers at those papers, especially among younger readers.

"There is tremendous speculation that someone [in Canada] is going to go the tabloid route," said Hugh Dow, president of Toronto media buyer M2 Universal.

Word that the Toronto Star will revamp its Sunday paper on Jan. 16, and is making changes at its printing plant north of the city to accommodate the shift, fanned the talk yesterday.

But Star editor-in-chief Giles Gherson said that while the paper considered a tabloid size for the revamped Sunday paper, it rejected the idea. Instead it will convert to a magazine-style broadsheet with better use of graphics and colour than the existing format, which currently looks similar to the news-heavy weekday and Saturday papers. "It's going to be kind of a magazine style with a broadsheet format," Mr. Gherson said. "The feel and the tone of it and the sensibility of it will be very much like a magazine."