Half-full or half-empty?

Certain jumped-up laddies have accused me of being a wee bit negative, so I thought I’d try and do a fair and impartial round up of recent news.

On the debit side:

• Centaur Media sees half-year pre-tax profits fall 86%
• Natmag plans to make up to 15% of staff redundant
• Emap to make all magazines A4 in cost-cutting drive
• ‘Challenging’ outlook at RBI prompts cost savings
• GMG chief sees bleak future for print version of Auto Trader
• Bauer Media joins the publishing industry pay freeze
• Condé Nast closes German Vanity Fair
• Reed Business Information cuts 35 jobs

But it’s not all gloom!

• Future launches knitting magazine
• Spectator Australia has a launch party

See – you feel better already!

Gimme shelter

With strong rumours swirling around of a high profile closure in the ‘homes and lifestyle’ category, I thought it might be useful to pick the bones of last week’s ABC figures and see how the major titles are faring.

Don’t panic! (24/02/09)

News from our American cousins from Folio:

B-to-B Magazine Revenues Plummet 13.1 Percent in Fourth Quarter

I don’t know about you, but I sense things have got a whole lot worse since December.

Centaur is “under review”

There’s a new euphemism for us all to come to grips with, “under review”. It means – or certainly means for Centaur – “closing”, as in the recent statement that Public Private Finance, Precision Marketing and Brand Strategy were “under review”. The hat trick has been completed with the announcement that Brand Strategy will join its brothers in that great shredder in the sky.

Gulp

From the Guardian:

Centaur reports 66% drop in recruitment advertising revenues

Note: this is a drop in all recruitment revenues – not just print.

Lack of precision

Hiding under the cover of the headline “Marketing Week to expand coverage of direct marketing“, Centaur annouce the closure of Precision Marketing magazine in the third paragraph of their story. Let’s give it a wee bit more space:

Precision Marketing is therefore to cease publishing from the February editon onwards.

This and the previous post reemphasises the lessons from the end of last year – free circulation titles that are dependent on advertising are all on life support.

Life support

From Press Gazette:

Archant is proposing to suspend the monthly publication of four of its Archant Life magazines in the Midlands following ‘a review of costs’ throughout the lifestyle magazine division.

Out of gas

As the motoring industry power slides into a full-blown depression (have you seen the figures for new car sales? They make even house prices seem buoyant) it can only be a matter of time before one of the car mags fails its MOT.

The unkindest cut

Private Frazer’s article on the rejuvenating properties of a cold porridge face scrub may now never see the light of day as Merricks Media, the publishers of Brand New You, have gone into liquidation.

Merricks also published half a dozen magazines on buying property abroad, so this category takes a further bath. Are you watching Archant Life?

Heartwarmingly, there appears to be a large amount of recrimination and back-biting about the firms demise, with the owners blaming the banks and others talking about ‘poor business decisions’.

Don’t panic! (09/02/09)

It’s Monday, so there’s another slew of bad news, profits warnings and gloomy forecasts.  Some that are more depressing than others include:

[Media Week] The growth of online advertising is set to slow “significantly” over the next five years, according to Forrester Research.

Note this quote from the author of the report: 

“The largely direct response nature of internet advertising … will help it to further outperform offline ad channels during the recession. We had [forecast] that online ad spend would account for 12.6% of all European advertising in 2012; thanks to the recession, we’ve increased that forecast to 14.8%.”

In other words, online advertising is growing slower than before, but it’s still going to take more market share than estimated – which means that offline advertising will fall faster than predicted.

And for those of you looking forward to the upcoming ABCs (I know I am), there’s this little morsel from Folio:

The consumer magazine industry felt the brunt of the U.S. economic meltdown at the newsstand during the second half of 2008