Gannin Doon

According to a post on Twitter (so it must be true) Archant’s North East Life magazine has waved goodbye to the Geordie shore and the current, June, issue will be its last.

Hadaway man, broons all roond.

Cast adrift

Private Frazer missed this one last month, but Canals, Rivers and Boats magazine sank with all hands at the beginning of April.

Knocked out

Ocean Media’s Streetfighters, the magazine on “the world’s most extreme performance motorbikes” has obviously been suffering from performance issues of its own, as their blog announces it has published its last.

As Mick and Keith almost put it, “in sleepy London town there’s just no place for a street fighting magazine.”

Zippy bungle

When you boast that the launch issue of your new weekly has sold 6,000 copies, you really do have no idea and no hope of survival. And so it comes to pass that Zip, “sister title” (expressed without irony), to Loaded has closed up after just nine issues and will morph into a “digital product”.

Of course, far from being a monumental screw-up by a bunch of incompetent chancers, this is being spun as a natural progression as “the digital market where the real reader and advertiser action is”.

Zip was published by Blue Publishing, the company run by Paul Baxendale-Walker, which bought two brands from the now-defunct Vitality Publishing. Vitality went bust last year owing nearly £1 million.

On the basis of this Press Gazette interview, Baxendale-Walker could very well be the biggest tosser in magazine publishing – and that’s a highly competitive field.

 

Unhappy families

There will be a bawlin’ and a greetin’ in Hammersmith if the news about Immediate Media proves to be correct.

Hot on the heels of Bauer casting out Pregnancy and Birth comes the word that Tom Bureau has come over all Richard III with regard to two of his little charges – Junior and Practical Parenting.

There has been no response to emails or tweets asking about the two titles, but they have been removed from the Immediate subscription site and banner ads on the individual title sites now lead to dead space.

This leaves a once-crowded category considerably thinner, with Immediate’s Prima Baby (last year’s buy-in from Hearst), Bauer’s Mother & Baby, and Media 10’s Gurgle, the last men toddling. Given that the year-on-year ABC performance of these three titles was, respectively  -24%, -22% and -4%, Private Frazer wouldn’t put a great deal of money on any of them making it into long trousers.

Eyes Down

Perhaps you can go broke by underestimating the intelligence of the public after all, as FeaturesExec reports that Full House magazine is being closed down by its owners Pep Publishing.

Even priced at just 55p the title lost nearly 20% of its circulation year on year, delivering a less than market-leading 138,158. Although perhaps I’m wrong about this as the magazine’s twitter bio says it is “Full House! the fastest growing ladies weekly mag”

Or perhaps the twitter page is updated by the same people who do Full House‘s website: the latest stories are from March, and the homepage splash is a Christmas gift guide.

Bingo!

Written on the wind

News from the literary world courtesy of Media Bistro, as Granta magazine loses not only its editor, but also its deputy editor. And its associate editor. And its art director. Oh, and they’re also closing their New York office.

Ordinarily, this would mean that the odds on the title getting to its next issue would be very long indeed, but when you’re owned by a billionaire heiress the normal rules probably don’t apply – in all sorts of ways.

 

24/05/13 UPDATE: Ten days later the story has made it to the Grauniad: “The world of publishing was rocked to its foundations…” 

Hard Life

Not even this old pessimist saw this one coming, but HRH Nicholas Coleridge has just announced the closure of Easy Living. Although, of course, it’s not closing, it’s suspended. And it’s definitely not closing, it’s going digital only. From the press release:

The print publication of Easy Living will be suspended from the July issue, …  Condé Nast will now enter a period of statutory consultation with the title’s team, following which a final decision will be made on the future of the print publication. [I think we probably know what this decision will be don’t we boys and girls?]

Quoth his Nicholasness “… we see few encouraging signs in this part of the market, with challenges at newsstand and an increasing reliance in the sector on multi-bagged offerings.  Easy Living’s print edition has a significant loyal fan base and subscriber base whom we will be reluctant to disappoint, and a particularly talented editorial and publishing staff.  ”

Presumably, therefore, the “particularly talented editorial and publishing staff” have nothing to fear from the “period of statutory consultation”?

Clapped Out Old Bangers

So the inevitable has happened at Autotrader with five of their titles –Autotrader, Top Marques (geddit), Truck and Plant, Van Trader and Farm Trader – going to that great breakers yard in the sky. Even two years ago Autotrader was selling over 60,000 copies a week, but it is now down to just 27,000 – a stunning illustration of how cyberspace ((c) HM the Queen) has devastated the classifieds business, whether that is small ads, recruitment or listings.

Looking more broadly at the motoring category we can see that there are some vulnerable big names, with Dennis, Haymarket and Bauer all having multiple products that are leaking readers and advertisers like oil from a Mark 1 Escort. What, really, is the point of a weekly car magazine? Or a monthly ‘motoring news’ title? Exactly.

Troubled Water

After 87 years it looks like Bridge magazine have discarded their ink on paper edition and gone digital only.

Who’s playing dummy?