As suggested last week, the price of RBI is getting steadily cheaper.
The fun quote in this piece in Folio is this one:
Reed Elsevier is said to have allowed first round bidders for Reed Business Information, to re-submit their bids last week…The new bids came in “slightly lower” than in the first round, the report said.
Be happy! Other people are worse off than you are…
…until you remember that what’s happening there is already starting to happen here.
From Press Gazette:
The latest figures from the National Readership Survey show that listings guide Skymag is the most widely read magazine in Britain – even though its readership is one million below its official distribution figure.
Distributed free to Sky TV customers every month, SKymag has a readership of 6.47 million, down five per cent year on year from July 2007 to June 2008. The magazine’s circulation, according to ABC, was 7.47 million for the first half of 2007.
If one magazine weighs 250gms, then at least 3 million tonnes of magazines are cat litter (and it’ll be more as we’re talking total readership, not household readership). That’s almost as much as the unsold copies of Maxim that are being pulped.
And, because it’s a quiet day in the parlour, some other fun facts: assuming an A4 size, one year’s unread magazines would cover 750 sq km – that would be enough to cover Merseyside with enough left over for Bristol. Laid end to end they’d stretch for over 3,200 km – From London to Cyprus. If they’re 4mm thick, then a year’s unread copies would create a pile 48km high.
Gruner + Jahr Enters RBI Bidding Fray
Bertelsmann to bid for Reed business titles
Given the ‘strength’ of the economy it’ll be interesting to see how much ‘gazundering’ goes on. What anyone bids today is likely to be more than they will want to bid tomorrow.
More on the ABC carnage later, but I think a standing ovation is appropriate for Maxim. Any old magazine can do double-digit falls, but to lose 60% of your circulation in just one year! That shows class!
Circulation figures are appearing for the first half of the year for US magazines, and they’re as grand as you can imagine. Take your pick from:
BPA Audit Shows More Circ Declines in First Half: Nearly two-thirds of consumer magazines that reported first half 2008 circulation figures with BPA Worldwide posted flat or lower circulation during the period, according to the audit group’s biannual report released yesterday.
Consumer Magazines Take Huge Hit at Newsstand: The consumer magazine industry took some huge hits at the newsstand and in overall circulation during the first half of the year, according to the [US] Audit Bureau of Circulations
From Peter Kirwan’s ‘Media Money’ blog in Press Gazette: Ad recession: We’re at the end of the beginning, not the beginning of the end
BBC to launch Lonely Planet magazine
Let’s hope that it does a wee bit better than the pevious BBC Holiday magazines, but the omens aren’t good: (more…)
Comag Marketing Group in the US has prepared a report on the connection between weakness in the economy and the magazine sales environment (they use the generally accepted euphemism ‘challenging’ to describe this, rather than the more accurate ‘dire’). You can download the PDF of it here but their top line conclusion is “1st quarter data show softness in sales across all editorial categories, retail classes of trade and geography.”
The rough translation is that sales are down for all types of magazine, in all types of shop everywhere across the US, i.e. there just isn’t any good news.
With our ABC figures due next week things are likely just to keep on getting better
Press Gazette owner mulls online-only future
8 August update: Press Gazette to relaunch as monthly magazine – which really is just one step away from total shutdown
And a wee bit from 11/08/08 Media Guardian: “There’s a whiff of death about an industry that can’t even sustain its own trade magazine.”
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