Bath pulls plug

For fans of magazine closures, Future Publishing is proving to be the gift that keeps on giving, with news that they are waving good bye to Xbox World and PSM3. The final issues will hit the newsstand on 12 December, after which it will be ‘game over’ for both.

Clair Porteous, Future’s head of entertainment, said ”Future continues to publish the highly successful Official Magazines for Xbox and PlayStation.” Apart, that is, in the US, where they recently announced the closure of Playstation the Official Magazine

What will be next?

NGame Over

Further to yesterday’s post, a commenter has pointed out that Future has also closed Nintendo Gamer magazine as it finally administers the coup de grace to a clutch of long-standing, but poor-selling, titles.

Future’s sales volumes have been pretty pathetic in recent years. Back in 2011 I mentioned that the company had 23 titles with ABCs of under 20,000 and (closures notwithstanding) the situation is unlikely to be much better. These stats are worth bearing in mind when Future pulls its usual stunt of talking up its digital improvements – the vast majority of its revenue is still bundled around small-circulation magazines that are a breath away from extinction.

Minus One

The sums just don’t add up any more for Future’s PC Plus magazine – FeaturesExec announce that the current issue is the last.

Given that the last ABC for the title showed it sold just 9,000 copies in the UK, no one much is going to miss it and the other titles in the sector (most of which are on the critical list themselves) aren’t really going to benefit.

Also announced is the closure of What Laptop, a title that sold barely 5,000 copies, as Future bins yet more of its ink-wasters.

There’ll be more computer magazine closures very soon, or my name isn’t James Frazer. (Which, obviously, it isn’t, but you know what I mean.)

Silent Spring

Tweet

From PaidContent:

“Magazine publisher Future is “eliminating an entire tier of overhead” in the shape of CEO Stevie Spring and FD John Bowman…Spring will be replaced by Future’s UK CEO, Bowman replaced by UK finance director Graham Harding.”

Bath pubs should expect a significant upsurge in business today, as the remnants of Future’s staff hit the bars in celebration.

Some interesting facts:

• In the year from October 2010, Spring’s salary was £400,000, Bowman’s was £246,000 .
• Spring also had a £160,000 performance-related bonus, Bowman £39,000.  (You have to ask if they can get £200K for last year’s dismal performance, what sort of bonus they would have got if they’d actually achieved anything.)

A nice quote for Chairman Peter Allen “[These departures] achieve substantial savings by eliminating an entire tier of corporate overhead.”

How Stevie likes her years of tireless self-promotion dedication dismissed as ‘corporate overhead’ is not known.

And is it just me, or do the statements and the speed of this move suggest that the departures were not, perhaps, entirely voluntary? The corporate statement says “ Stevie Spring, CEO, and John Bowman, FD, have resigned with immediate effect.” No warm words from Stevie, no handover period, no farewell tour – just ‘resigned with immediate effect.’

My work here is done.

Changing Channels

Stevie’s doing a bit of selling, with Hi-Fi Choice, What Satellite & Digital TV and Home Cinema Choice being offloaded to MyHobbyStore with immediate effect.

None of the titles sells more than 10,000 copies. All have followed the Future model of calamitous sales declines in the past few years.

How many of the staff will relocate from Bath to Sevenoaks has not been disclosed.

Spot the difference

Good news from Future! They announce that their digital sales have passed the £2m a year point.

More on that later and why these volumes probably represent only around 5% of their print sales, but first, a competition!

See if you can spot the difference between these two statements from Mark Wood, the CEO of Future UK

“Our UK print magazine sales are holding up well” (1 August – PR statement)

“Sales of UK print magazines on newsstand,… have … seen significant decline (around 10% year-on-year)” (15 July – memo to staff)

Recalibration Watch

Various bits of information are coming through from the poor bloody workers at Future, so rather then post them up here, I thought I’d do a page to follow the effects of Stevie’s recalibrating of the business. The first stuff can be found on this page

I’ll update this as more is announced, or as more is leaked (private.frazer@hotmail.co.uk)

If I can be bothered, obviously. Those oatcakes aren’t going to eat themselves.

16 September – Redline to close

Future’s Troubling Present

A correspondent sends some information from Bath, including copies of staff emails send by the Blessed Stevie and Mark Wood, the UK CEO. More snippets to follow, but Private Frazer was particularly taken with this from Mark’s email to staff on the 15th

As today’s announcement from Stevie shows, the US print business is currently facing far tougher challenges than the UK. But the measures we are taking here are in response to the fact that sales of UK print magazines on newsstand, our largest single revenue source, have also seen significant decline (around 10% year-on-year). We simply have to take action on our costs and our structure in response.

(emphasis added)

Note the happy correlation between a 10% fall in newsstand and a 10% axing, sorry, recalibration, of staff levels

A Grimmer Future

A trading statement from Future reports revenues that are declining faster than expected, and the Blessed Stevie makes the ultimate sacrifice – she’s going to fire a whole load of people on both sides of the Atlantic. No news on what her pay rise is going to be this year.

So what now for Future’s titles? Which are they going to decide are rooted in the past and have to be ‘recalibrated’ (Stevie’s new euphemism for ‘sacking people’).

A strong rumour has it that PC Format (2010 ABC 9,318, down 21% yoy) is looking down the barrel, but there are several more which seem to have been on life support for some time. In technology, you can take your choice from What Laptop (6,585, down 20%), Computer Arts Projects (6,647 down 20%) and PC Plus (13,727, down 21%) all of which would seem to be long overdue a ‘reorganisation’. Motoring has my perennial favourite Fast Car (19,004 down 27%), Redline (9,623 down 26%), plus the almost utterly pointless Fast Ford and Total Vauxhall; and the music magazines contains three guitar titles, all of which are losing sales.

Gossip from Future should be directed towards private.frazer@hotmail.co.uk and watch this space.

Unsubstantiated Rumours

Two titles that are reported to be in the departure lounge.

A source suggests that Crimson’s Growing Business magazine has given up on its print edition. The last issue came out just before Christmas and a new one should be hitting the mail about now, but there’s no sign of it yet. Several emails to Crimson have gone unanswered.

But an email to Private Frazer this morning states that The Publican is calling ‘time’ on its print edition.

Any further information – or a definitive statement from either Crimson or UBM – would be warmly welcomed. email private.frazer@hotmail.co.uk or just leave a message in the comments section below.

Finally, the Guardian reports this morning that Future is in the running for BBC Magazines. Sounds to me like PR flummery – if they do buy the titles (for upwards of £100 million) I will eat my sporran.