More than a quarter of people have cut back spending on magazines and newspapers in the economic downturn in favour of free online content, a study shows today.
But as more news outlets consider charging for their internet offering, the report shows there is little appetite for subscription services in the immediate future.
From The Independent – who could do with a few quid from somewhere, anywhere, themselves.
Ink Publishing has stopped publication of Velocity, the inflight magazine for VLM Airlines.
Two unconnected, but not unrelated, news stories:
PrintWeek: Demand for paper to fall dramatically by 2020
Magazine demand is estimated to decline by 32% as a result of a rise in online publishing and impact on advertising, along with the impact of digital media on the business magazine sector.
Rupert Murdoch: “I can see the day maybe 20 years away where you don’t actually have paper and ink and printing presses.”
Future’s You Can Craft magazine – “designed especially for card makers” – has folded. This is the second craft title to close recently with Aceville’s Quick and Crafty being put back in its box two weeks ago.
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. (more…)
Tam o’Shanter’s off to Tim Brooks, Guardian News & Media’s managing director, who in an interview with Media Week came up with this:
If I had a pound for every title that will close in 2009, I’d have enough money to subscribe to both Monocle and Intelligent Life – but that would be pointless, because neither of them will be around by the end of this year.
A man after Private Frazer’s own heart.
Sometimes, in those dark moments of personal doubt, Private Frazer thinks that perhaps the big nobs in publishing companies do know what they’re doing and widespread closures and redundancies in our industry will be avoided. Then he comes across examples of idiocy so perfect they become amost poetic. (more…)
More on RBI, this from The Times
[The] sale of Reed … appears to be struggling, with no bids close to the mooted £1.25 billion price. One bidder to have made it through to the second round has indicated its bid was nowhere near £1 billion and there is talk the unit may be worth as little as £800 million.
If the process drags on much further my original bid of half a crown and a nuttals minto may be the most generous – and I’m starting to have second thoughts about the minto.
Apologies for the silence over the past few weeks. Private Frazer has been in the Kingdom of Fife tending to a dear old maiden aunt who had promised me a wee something in her will. She was in pretty ill health and despite my best attention she made a full recovery, so I’ve had to come back to work.
The corpses have been stacking up in the parlour and I’ll try to lay a few of them to rest next week.
And we’ve the unrestrained joy of the latest ABC figures in a few days. The more optimistic of the circulation managers of the Private’s acquaintance think they’ll be ‘grim’; the pessimistic ones are talking of a ‘bloodbath’. But one man’s tragedy is another man’s excuse to have a wee chuckle, so it’ll be smiles all the way here in Walmington.
The RBI sale is obviously going wonderfully well. According to a report in the Telegraph the company is trying to put together a £750m loan to anyone that will buy the company in one piece. Given that the asking price for the whole package is £1.25bn it means that if anyone does want to buy the group they will only have to find £500m of their own (or, more likely, further borrowed) cash.
Of course it’s one thing to insist on the sale taking place in one bundle, but I imagine it will be difficult to insist that every magazine and every division remains intact after the sale. The opportunity obviously exists for someone to borrow the money from Reed to buy RBI and then sell off parts of the business (this used to be called ‘asset stripping’) to pay off the money borrowed. (more…)
