Don’t Panic! (24/09/09)

Still no respite from ad carnage in the USA. The analysis of the October-dated monthlies by the Media industry Newsletter shows:

As in previous months, ad pages … were down across the board, affecting every category and virtually every major title. Out of 155 monthly titles tracked by MIN, 131 (84.5%) saw ad pages decline in October; of these, 111 (71.6% of the total) saw ad pages decline more than 10% for the month, 76 (49%) saw ad pages decline more than 20%, 42 (27.1%) saw ad pages decline more than 30%, and 22 (14.2%) saw ad pages decline more than 40%.

Man the lifeboats

So, one week on from the defenestration of Johnathan Shephard, what have we learned?

If it was up to the PPA itself or the public pronouncements from the PPA Board, the answer would be naething much at all. The PPA ‘News‘ section is devoid of, well, news. It doesn’t even have the press release announcing Shephard’s departure (though to give them their due, they did manage to airbrush all references to him from the site within 12 hours).

Kill Your Speed

Ink Publishing has stopped publication of Velocity, the inflight magazine for VLM Airlines.

Leaving Home

Unsurprisingly, given the state of the overseas property market, Homes Overseas magazine is giving up the struggle to stay in print and is going ‘online only’.

Money is so vulgar

Luxury Publishing, customer publisher for upmarket clients such as personal concierge outfit Quint­essentially, has gone into administration.

Man overboard!

Now then, what’s this all about?

Jonathan Shephard, chief executive of the Periodical Publishers Association, has left the magazine industry trade body with immediate effect. [The Guardian]

Ill-informed speculation welcomed.

19:30 update: The following email dropped into Private Frazer’s inbox this afternoon…

Axer axed

After 25 years and being the hatchet man for 20% of the workforce, it must rankle to be pushed out of the door as an ‘overhead burden‘. I wonder if Simon Middleboe will use this endorsement on his c.v.?

And after their great performance with Incisive and EMAP, I wonder if there are any people over at Apax who are also new on the jobs market?

We are all publishers now

Some good news from the Incisive crash and burn – each of us now has a stake in the spun-off American Lawyer Media. Part of the deal is that RBS gets 49% of ALM; as we, through the Government, own 70% of RBS we now each have a $3 piece of the company.

With such watertight investments like Incisive, it’s amazing that the Royal Bank of Scotland needed a government bale out.

Incisive blunted

From the FT:

Incisive Media, the business-to-business publisher, is splitting into two. Apax Partners, its private equity owner, will keep control of the American Lawyer Media business in the US, while banks will take over the struggling UK arm.

Apart from putting the final torch to Tim Weller’s plans for global domination (and how long does anyone think he’ll stay in position after Incisive’s lenders move in?) this is likely to presage a good deal of, er, rationalisation of Incisive’s products.