Career Arc

Barry McIlheney has been appointed Chief Executive of the PPA.

So Bazza’s career arc: Smash Hits, Empire, Elle, FHM, Zoo, Sunday Sport, PPA.

Mike Soutar, chief executive of ShortList Media, said: “Barry is an out-and-out print man. He has print running through his veins. I can’t imagine a better ambassador.”

Possibly unrelated news:

The Association of Online Publishers, the digital trade body, has confirmed its split from the Periodical Publishers’ Association.

Other reaction:

Rory Brown‘s Blog

BusinessMedia Blog

Poor Performance

Unity Media’s Perfomance Car seems to have gone to the great car-breakers in the sky. They’ve stripped the title from their corporate site, the subs link can’t find the product and the blog hasn’t been updated for months.

If only they did cash for clunkers for magazines.

Don’t Panic! (17/01/10)

Latest news from our American cousins. And guess what? It isnae good.

The Publishers Information Bureau has released its 2009 year-end magazine advertising report. It revealed that ad pages for 2009 were down 25.6%, while estimated revenues closed at $19.45 billion, a drop of 18.1%. That makes 10 quarterly falls out of eleven since mid 2007.

Even comparing the 4th quarter of 2009 with the very grim end of 2008 ad pages were down 21% and revenues over 12% off. Does anyone fancy calling the bottom of this market? 2011? 2012? Never?

Time Up

Just how unpleasant are things going to get at Time Out? The Evening Standard reports that Tony Eliot might have to pony up £3 million to keep the company going, and Media Week has news about a round of redundancies.

In the annual accounts the auditors warn that the group could “require further financing to continue trading” if it fails to meet “forecast trading results” this year or if Mr Elliott does not invest £3 million by June.

The London edition of Time Out had an actively paid circulation of 68,579 in July-December 2007 ABC figures; that had fallen to 55,928 for January-June last year, or nearly 20% off in 18 months. Advertising was reported to be down 30% last year.

Not ‘if’, ‘when’

As Private Frazer repeatedly says, you hiv nae hit the bottom until you’ve stopped gaein doun.

Bear that in mind when you read how the wee monkeys at Centaur are spinning their latest trading statement. Revenues down 15% in November and December is a ‘positive trend’ – in that the rate of descent has slowed.

This actually means that Centaur’s hole is 15% deeper than it was in 2008 when they reported that “we have experienced some further deterioration in trading during November and December.” And that came on the back of  falls from the beginning of 2008. Two years of decline.

“While levels of forward visibility remain limited the Board is confident that the fundamental strengths of the Group provide a solid foundation for growth” say Centaur. Translation – “we’re still not sure what’s going to happen, but we can’t fall much further.”

The Lost Chord

I was sitting at my piano, the other day
But my mind was ill at ease
They were coming to take it away

And now they have – Rhinegold Publishing’s Piano will no longer be published after the March/April issue.

Left hand meet right hand

From the InPublishing website – compare the news entry (centre) with the banner advert (right). The ‘extra dimension’ is presumably the black hole of administration.