I Ain’t Got Rhythm

Hat tip to Media Bulletin for the news that Performing Musician has left the building. Thank you very much and good night!

New balls please

Private Frazer likes nothing better than to curl up every evening with his copy of the London Gazette. And what should catch his eye yesterday but this notice about TennisLifeUK.  You cannot be serious!

Computer crash

Computing magazine is to go from weekly publication to fortnightly from next month, according to Press Gazette.

Winner of this week’s Private Frazer award for corporate garbagespeak is  Computing‘s director of content Lem Bingley, who told Press Gazette that the redesign was not a way of cutting costs, but about improving the “look and feel of the brand”.

Lem is also the winner of this week’s insight award for the gem: “We think the role of print is changing.”

MMC All Out?

Media Week make flesh the rumours that have been circulating over the last week that the magazine distributor MMC is about to go into administration.

“Media Week understands about 50% of MMC’s clients are waiting for overdue payments” they say, but ‘overdue’ in this context means outside of the usual 90 day payment terms. The most significant thing here is that MMC have a wide range of small and niche titles who are going to be left without income for at least the last three months’ editions and may find it difficult to shrug off this revenue loss. Companies with a lot of exposure include the fishing magazine specialist David Hall, The Oldie, Wisden, Jazz Publishing and Our Dogs. None of these are really of the size where a loss of tens of thousands isn’t going to hurt.

The ‘Off’ Switch

From the Grauniad. “Publisher H Bauer said today that it had started a consultation with staff in its TV editorial and listings departments, which also produces TV Choice and Total TV Guide, over the future of TV Quick. The 80p weekly saw its circulation plunge 27% year-on-year in the second half of 2009.”