Traditional media involvement with the internet is all about companies with a lot to lose and trying not to lose it; and others starting from scratch with a lot to win. The latest with ‘a lot to lose’ are the broadcast networks. They have ‘managed’ declining audiences for years but must have believed they had escaped […]
Read more
Will this UK company be the digital model for magazine publishers?
May 18, 2013 
1 Comment
Nobody needs reminding that a large number of paid-for magazines are at risk, especially in countries like the UK and Australia where newsstand and supermarket displays stoked consumer demand across 20 years of booming circulations. Magazine sales have now been in sharp decline for the past seven years. The cold fact is that many paid-for magazines […]
Read more
How publishers can find digital success in ‘melting’ media if …
May 9, 2013 2 Comments
Newspapers and magazines continue to suffer from falling advertising and circulation revenue. No change there. But, as the paywalls go up all over the world of newspapers, it is becoming clear that the big “legacy” winners will mostly come from two groups: 1. The largest. In newspapers, national and nearly-national media with international reach; and […]
Read more
Will the classifieds battle kill paid-for newspapers?
April 24, 2013 3 Comments
Classified advertising was the unsung hero of print media in the second half of the 20th century. Newspapers and magazines everywhere paid homage to full-colour display advertisers, even though it was the packed pages of high-yielding classifieds for cars, homes, and jobs that were subsidising cover prices and turbocharging profits. Some publishers were reluctant to admit […]
Read more
How ‘Generation N’ can put profit back into newspapers
April 10, 2013 0 Comments
It’s been just like the old days in Britain this week. There’s been fierce coverage for and against Margaret Thatcher. And sell-out newspapers reporting her life and death. Fittingly, UK daily sales peaked 24 years ago when Thatcher became Prime Minister. But it’s been downhill ever since. The problem is that a fixation with the […]
Read more
Look who’s coming to save daily newspapers…
March 26, 2013 0 Comments
Journalists like writing about newspapers in a “How-can-the-world-exist-without-us?” kind of way. Not even collapsing readership and advertising revenue can deter them from grasping at every half-reassuring whisper or hint of not-so-bad news about the future of newspapers. That’s why the authoritative Pew Research Centre captured the column inches with its “2013 State of the News […]
Read more
Time Inc to float: Who will unlock the digital promise of IPC Media?
February 23, 2013 1 Comment
UPDATED: 7 March : IPC Media – one of the world’s most famous magazine groups – is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2013. Or rather, it isn’t. The London-based company may have decided there’s no reason to party. Business is tough, copy sales and advertising are sliding, and profits have fallen by more than two-thirds in […]
Read more
How will Europe’s secretive media giant cope with the glare in Australia and the US?
February 15, 2013 3 Comments
Bauer is the secretive, private company which has leapt, in two dramatic deals, from being Germany’s largest publisher to a world leader employing 11,000 people with a turnover of €2.5bn from 570 magazines, 300 digital services and 50 TV and radio stations across 16 countries. Some 70% of revenues now come from outside Germany. But paying […]
Read more
Online TV boom could spur mega-mergers – and help Murdoch win again
February 1, 2013 1 Comment
It has taken Hollywood A-lister Kevin Spacey to move serious coverage of the internet TV revolution from blogs, tweets, and Wired to the pages of daily newspapers. In case you missed the buzz, Spacey is starring in the US remake of the political thriller “House of Cards”. And, if that is all you know about […]
Read more
What this New York dotcom couple tells us about the future of newspapers and magazines
January 10, 2013 3 Comments
These are get-real times for traditional newspaper and magazine publishers. The winners will be those who recognise 5 basic truths: Paying content: The wake-up starts here. A new book by US journalism professor C.W.Anderson* gets to the heart of the “journalistic hubris” that prevents life-saving change across traditional media: an attitude that sees original reporting as the […]
Read more
Is this the Future for specialist magazines?
December 29, 2012 4 Comments
Future Plc is one of Europe’s best-known magazine publishers. It is neither the most successful, nor the largest, nor even the most inventive. But, over the past 15 years, it has suffered the wildest swings in fortune, been the bravest, grabbed the most headlines and (for the investment-minded) issued the most profit warnings of any […]
Read more
Axel Springer-Daily Mail ‘merger’ would create two world-beating media groups
December 6, 2012 0 Comments
The tectonic plates of newspaper-land are shifting. First, comes Rupert Murdoch’s brought-forward demerger of News Corp from what will become the Fox Corp TV and film business – ahead of next year’s UK criminal trials over phone hacking and corruption. (En passant: expect an Autumn 2013 re-run of the bid for BskyB, Europe’s most profitable […]
Read more
Will the UK’s last Press baron go with the money and ditch national newspapers?
November 19, 2012 0 Comments
After a deal this week to divest his regional newspapers, the last of Britain’s press barons is wrestling with the deluxe dilemma of whether to ditch (or de-merge) his national press birthright in order to concentrate on some remarkable ‘new media’ investments. Family dynasties can find it extraordinarily difficult to turn their backs on the […]
Read more
What will the world’s best business media boss do next?
November 14, 2012 2 Comments
Peter Rigby is one of the great survivors among European media company chiefs. He became CEO of what is now Informa Plc in 1989, the year when: Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web, Time Inc merged with Warner Brothers, and Alan Bond’s media-to-brewing group became Australia’s largest ever bankruptcy. It was also the year […]
Read more
Ditch the advertising? Newspapers, magazines must get radical…
November 2, 2012 0 Comments
Newspapers and magazines are the frontline of traditional media tormented by changing times. New and not-so-new competition has reduced readership and savaged profits. How can they survive? Most publishers have two possible answers: Embrace digital media, especially through the iPad and other tablets ‘Consolidate’ in order to spread existing revenues more profitably among fewer publications […]
Read more
Can magazines really compete as online retailers?
October 25, 2012 0 Comments
Magazines are perfect for ecommerce. Or are they? Well, the major online women’s retailers – like Net-a-Porter, ASOS, HauteLook, TopShop and Groupe Gilt – use content in magazine-like ways. They employ a raft of former editors and, tantalisingly, either collaborate with magazines or advertise (just a little) in them. They also produce online magazines. And […]
Read more
3 steps to seismic change in media
October 20, 2012 0 Comments
Life is confusing for incumbents. Ask any business school student. It’s not meant to be easy for traditional market-leading, cash-generative companies quickly to reinvent themselves and carry on growing profits in the face of revolutionary change. It will always seem easier for insurgents. They may be relatively poor but have few inhibitions and little to fear […]
Read more
How Richard Desmond became a media billionaire – and what might just come next
October 12, 2012 2 Comments
Richard Desmond is the rags-to-riches, pleased-with-himself Brit who has made a billion by upstaging established media leaders. Across the past 40 years, Desmond has successively scored big against the odds. Look at his record: 1966: Leaves school at age 15 after an impoverished, lonely adolescence living with his mother above a garage. Sells classified ads […]
Read more
TV revolution from West London that threatens to change everything
September 27, 2012 1 Comment
Television networks across the world can’t decide whether the internet represents more of an opportunity than a threat. Most broadcasters recognise the upside potential of the web. That’s why they are playing with it. But (like their cousins in hard copy media) the mood darkens when they worry about how they can find 21st century […]
Read more
Is he the world’s smartest magazine publisher?
August 28, 2012 4 Comments
The twentieth century was “The Magazine Century”. Times when great people did great things with magazines, whose births and deaths tracked the lives of readers everywhere. Magazines will never again be so important, so profitable, so pervasive. Or so easily-defined. Even when we get used to describing digital editions as “magazines”, it will never be […]
Read more
10 hurdles as ‘old media’ dream of digital success
August 15, 2012 0 Comments
It is 10 years since US learning luminary Marc Prensky wrote his seminal work about “digital natives” (those born digital) and “digital immigrants” (the rest of us). He might, of course, have been addressing the challenges of traditional media companies as they struggle in a world of hyperactive digital natives. Here are my 10 Thoughts for immigrants… They […]
Read more
Will most newspapers and magazines be free?
August 3, 2012 2 Comments
Newspapers and magazines have been rocked by collapsing advertising revenues. Hard copy is, quite simply, losing much of its consumer advertising power in the face of falling circulations and digital competition. Such lost revenues frequently turn publishing profits into losses. The economic model is (mostly) broken, and the race is on for traditional publishers trying […]
Read more
Can Australia’s best magazines group bounce back from its investor shambles?
July 27, 2012 1 Comment
Private equity group CVC is this week hosting directors of its Nine Entertainment Company, whose Channel Nine has the Australian broadcast rights for the Olympics. But they have nothing to celebrate. The Australian TV coverage itself may or may not lose a reported A$40m. But CVC is staring into the abyss. It is six years […]
Read more
Meet the genius behind Britain’s last magazine boom
July 21, 2012 3 Comments
We may well live to read “where-were-you-when…” obituaries for Time magazine. But this month, a stream of UK newspapers, magazines, broadcasters, Tweets and blogs lamented the death of a 9-year-old monthly magazine with a circulation of under 25,000. In a farewell blog, the magazine’s founder reflected on the trials of traditional media and said: “I wouldn’t […]
Read more
Radio broadcasters face digital dogfight with internet streamers
July 14, 2012 1 Comment
Radio has always confused media futurologists and defied the sceptics. The sound-only medium survived the conquest of TV and the ipod, and has managed to bounce back from recession and technological revolution, with audiences and advertising more or less intact. In the 1990s, just as radio audiences were starting to sag under the weight of MTV […]
Read more
Newspaper groups in 4 countries show how to win a digital future
June 23, 2012 1 Comment
Daily newspapers will one day provide the most intriguing episodes in the story of how traditional media was tortured and tamed by the digital new wave. In the week when I learned that the six-year-old Twitter is generating fast-growing profits of more than $100m on turnover of perhaps $350m, Britain’s The Guardian (a UK web […]
Read more
iPad comes to the rescue of magazines (sort of)
June 10, 2012 0 Comments
UK magazine publisher Mark Wood knew what everyone was thinking: “The iPad is not the saviour of magazines”. But the calm-down words came just as it looked as if Steve Jobs’ last great creation was, indeed, coming to the rescue of the gasping magazine industry. It all happened in October. Eighteen months after the launch […]
Read more
Could this really be the beginning of the end for the mighty Reed Elsevier?
May 25, 2012 0 Comments
The digital whirlpool will claim some big corporate scalps over this next few years. Consumer-facing media companies across newspapers and television risk being caught in the headlights of Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter and more. But there will be casualties too from the aristocratic ranks of the world’s leading business and professional information companies. We may […]
Read more
Is this little Swiss company the future of newspapers everywhere?
May 11, 2012 3 Comments
What’s wrong with newspapers? We could spend the next year struggling to answer the question, while traipsing through the undergrowth of the internet, of consumer tastes and news appetite, and of the competition for time, money and advertising. Newspapers are, of course, a format not a media channel. There are many different types of newspapers. […]
Read more
10 winners and losers in media. And 3 things every publisher must have…
May 7, 2012 7 Comments
In the clockwork orange world, UK publishers (and their peers around the world) are trying to get to grips with what they hope is their digital future. It is easy to believe that good times are just around the corner. But they’re not: Despite the sharp declines in revenue and profitability, relatively few newspapers and […]
Read more
Rupert Murdoch in London and on the edge
April 21, 2012 3 Comments
The hype runs deep. But Wednesday and Thursday this week really could become the most humbling days of Rupert Murdoch’s life, as he prepares to face the UK’s Leveson judicial inquiry. He knows there will be none of the slanted, semi-competent questioning and posturing MPs of the Parliamentary enquiry that tested his self-control in July. […]
Read more
Business publishers in a new world where ‘need to know’ is not quite what it seems
April 10, 2012 0 Comments
It’s a tale of two traditional media sectors which once thought the world of magazines and now find themselves, well, a bit confused. They were once the kings respectively of glossy consumer magazines and (sometimes) high-minded business-to-business ones, famed for their paying readers and profit margins juiced up by advertising. Then came the 21st century. […]
Read more
Murdoch ‘swan song’ as insurgents threaten traditional media empires
February 24, 2012 1 Comment
As the UK’s chatterers await the launch this weekend of The Sun on Sunday, be prepared for a few, well, contradictions. First, Rupert Murdoch is in London to exude confidence in his troublesome newspapers. Second, there will be a cut-price mini-boom in Sunday newspaper sales. Third, we will see an investigatory splash story with no […]
Read more
How NOT to find the future for newspaper groups: the sad story of UK’s ‘Daily Mirror’
February 9, 2012 1 Comment
Sixty years ago in June, Axel Springer, Germany’s own Citizen Kane, launched Bild. The new daily unashamedly copied the style and tone (but not the politics) of Britain’s left-leaning Daily Mirror, right up to the red-top logo. As Springer proudly watched his new paper roll off the presses in 1952, he felt confident about its prospects. […]
Read more
Frank Bennack: modest elder statesman of media who will out-pace Murdoch
January 24, 2012 0 Comments
This is a story of three octogenarians. It is 60 years since the death, aged 88, of (William) Randolph Hearst, now the world’s second most famous newspaperman. The fearsome publisher-cum-politician, who is debited with creating “yellow journalism”, was lampooned in Orson Welles’ 1941 movie, “Citizen Kane”. And he certainly knew how to use his newspapers, especially […]
Read more
Is Leo Laporte the future of TV everywhere?
January 5, 2012 2 Comments
Time for some New Year reality: In just 10 years, three of the world’s larger daily newspaper groups (Australia’s Fairfax, the UK’s Trinity Mirror, and the New York Times Co) have each managed to lose more than 85% of their stockmarket value. For all the job losses, cutbacks, and online loss making, it is shareholders who […]
Read more
James Packer wins his casino bets and heads back to media…
December 5, 2011 1 Comment
James Packer is the most famous man in Australia. He’s the 44-year-old businessman whom Aussies variously admire, despise, love for his Australian-ness, and respect for his under-sung business achievements in the shadow of a famously demanding father. And, then, there are the people who want to see him fall flat on his face simply because […]
Read more
Can faded newspaper brands survive in a ‘content-first’, cut-price world?
November 23, 2011 2 Comments
Traditional media companies everywhere are in turmoil. Most are caught somewhere between maximising (as best they can) profits from declining media ‘channels’ – and investing in businesses that just might become the next big thing. Few are actually in denial about the darkening outlook for their legacy businesses, although their somewhat rosy views of the […]
Read more
Will Abu Dhabi be the world’s media capital – or end up in flames?
November 9, 2011 3 Comments
Abu Dhabi is a country on a mission. To become the oil state that built itself a real, future-proofed economy. To be the brightest star in global investment markets. To be the Switzerland of the Middle East. And to be a world star in media, sports and culture. In short, this home of as much […]
Read more
Magazines in crisis: 3 ways they can still come back to win in the digital age
October 27, 2011 3 Comments
Sales and marketing people seldom let the mask slip. So, magazine industry people can keep up the smiles and pretend that the iPad or some other piece of magic is coming to their rescue. Or that they are in such control of their loyal readers that the return to former glories is but an innovation-click […]
Read more
Is this ‘secret’ business the world’s smartest media company?
October 13, 2011 7 Comments
The plight of traditional newspaper businesses is depressing many people in the UK, US, Australia and elsewhere. Journalists see their jobs at risk from the limitless supply of “free” always-on news and lean online ‘aggregators’. Investors face losses and the decline of historic, once so-powerful news brands. And proprietors, bloated by years of prestige, power and […]
Read more
Is this quiet Brit becoming the most influential person on the planet?
October 4, 2011 6 Comments
There’s a captivating, almost-magical web site where you can feel the passion and share the big ideas of brilliant and insightful people including many of the world’s leading thinkers and doers. The site is free and open to everyone. It’s called TED and, although that stands for ‘Technology, Entertainment and Design’, the mission is no […]
Read more
Five reasons Facebook may be doomed
September 27, 2011 5 Comments
Facebook profits are roaring ahead. One insider says the social network’s profit in the first half of 2011 was some $500m (c£300m) – almost equal to that for the whole of 2010 – on revenue up to $1.6bn (£1bn). Founder Mark Zuckerberg told buzzing delegates at last week’s F8 conference of developers, journalists, and staff […]
Read more
Who killed Britain’s best media company?
September 17, 2011 17 Comments
Seventeen years ago, The Independent described a British company as “one of the most admired media companies in the world”. It had grown in 50 years from humble origins as a regional newspaper publisher to a £1bn turnover public company with fast-growth, vibrant operations in magazines, online information, exhibitions, and radio. Within a few years, it […]
Read more
Can Westfield win Olympic gold – or will “Dad’s boys” drop the Frank Lowy baton?
September 12, 2011 1 Comment
Today (Tuesday 13 September) sees the glittering opening of Europe’s largest shopping centre at the Olympic “city” in recycled Stratford, East London. The stats and stars will scream from screens and front pages for days and weeks. More than 300 shops, 70 restaurants, 14 cinema screens, three hotels and the UK’s largest casino are the […]
Read more
Can daily newspapers survive?
September 2, 2011 3 Comments
The media is accustomed to calling ‘time’ on industries. How many (or how few) newspapers ever spoke out in support of ailing car, steelmaking or shipbuilding industries, under siege from low-cost manufacturing countries and newer technologies? Media pundits have frequently amplified the calls for long-established industries to ‘face facts’, ‘get real’, and ‘stand on their […]
Read more
Apple of his eye? Absent Dads made their mark on Steve Jobs, Lennon, Obama, Cruise, Chaplin, Mandela – and Hitler and Mao
August 25, 2011 5 Comments
Thursday 6 October 2011. The tragic death of Steve Jobs today, aged 56, marks the loss of a genius: the co-founder and driver of Apple, the company that effectively created modern computing. What so recently has become the world’s biggest technology company has given us the iphone, ipod, ipad, macbook, and the whole itunes revolution. […]
Read more
Can companies (and football clubs) turn round UK’s inner cities?
August 18, 2011 1 Comment
Let’s get past the UK riots, cut through the political rhetoric, and separate the crimes from inner city deprivation. As the flakey media lose interest, it is time for politicians to get back to the jigsaw puzzle. But the picture has changed. The trouble, of course, is that fundamental problems require big, bold solutions – […]
Read more
“Daddy, I’ve been to a riot…”
August 12, 2011 2 Comments
Media and politicians have been trying too hard to find an explanation for the riots and looting that rocked the UK this week. Inevitably, they have failed, simply because there is no single explanation any more than there was any one type of participant in the urban mayhem. The media buzz about middle-class students arrested […]
Read more
Stand by for (gulp) the post-Murdoch media world
August 4, 2011 13 Comments
It’s time to use the past tense. Rupert Murdoch was the original international media mogul. Before him, there were (quite distinctly) press barons, television tycoons, book publishers, and film studio moguls; separate industries, mainly in separate countries, with their own distinct traditions and leaders. But that was until Rupert Murdoch stormed across national and industry […]
Read more-
Who killed Britain’s best media company?
-
Stand by for (gulp) the post-Murdoch media world
-
Is this ‘secret’ business the world’s smartest media company?
-
10 winners and losers in media. And 3 things every publisher must have…
-
She may soon be the world’s richest person. And Gina Rinehart is coming to an economy near you
-
Facebook follies, Nokia nightmares and BlackBerry bonfires
-
Is this quiet Brit becoming the most influential person on the planet?
-
Cooking the books: Harry Potter rushes in
-
The power and vulnerability of Rupert Murdoch comes into focus…
-
Apple of his eye? Absent Dads made their mark on Steve Jobs, Lennon, Obama, Cruise, Chaplin, Mandela – and Hitler and Mao
-
Five reasons Facebook may be doomed
-
UK online surge, Walmart scraps with Amazon, and Aussie ‘foreign’ online war is exposed
-
Is this the Future for specialist magazines?
-
And another thing about the ‘News of the World’…
-
Is he the world’s smartest magazine publisher?
-
Magazines in crisis: 3 ways they can still come back to win in the digital age
-
Will the classifieds battle kill paid-for newspapers?
-
Will Abu Dhabi be the world’s media capital – or end up in flames?
-
Rupert Murdoch in London and on the edge
-
Is this little Swiss company the future of newspapers everywhere?
-
Can daily newspapers survive?
-
UK phone hacking breaks open the box: what’s next?
-
Meet the genius behind Britain’s last magazine boom
-
What this New York dotcom couple tells us about the future of newspapers and magazines
-
UK motorists speed up the cash as AA turns back on its historic role
-
How will Europe’s secretive media giant cope with the glare in Australia and the US?
-
How Richard Desmond became a media billionaire – and what might just come next
-
How publishers can find digital success in ‘melting’ media if …
-
Is Leo Laporte the future of TV everywhere?
-
And the winning country is….not France
-
“Daddy, I’ve been to a riot…”
-
Can faded newspaper brands survive in a ‘content-first’, cut-price world?
-
What will the world’s best business media boss do next?
-
Will most newspapers and magazines be free?
-
Radio broadcasters face digital dogfight with internet streamers
-
TV revolution from West London that threatens to change everything
-
How NOT to find the future for newspaper groups: the sad story of UK’s ‘Daily Mirror’
-
Murdoch ‘swan song’ as insurgents threaten traditional media empires
-
Newspaper groups in 4 countries show how to win a digital future
-
Australians winning Home and Away
-
Paper chase… or rush for the exit?
-
James Packer wins his casino bets and heads back to media…
-
Will this UK company be the digital model for magazine publishers?
-
Life after OneTel mega-bust
-
Can companies (and football clubs) turn round UK’s inner cities?
-
Online TV boom could spur mega-mergers – and help Murdoch win again
-
Can Westfield win Olympic gold – or will “Dad’s boys” drop the Frank Lowy baton?
-
Time Inc to float: Who will unlock the digital promise of IPC Media?
-
Can Australia’s best magazines group bounce back from its investor shambles?
-
Look who’s coming to save daily newspapers…
-
Ditch the advertising? Newspapers, magazines must get radical…
-
Can magazines really compete as online retailers?
-
3 steps to seismic change in media
-
Axel Springer-Daily Mail ‘merger’ would create two world-beating media groups
-
Is this the online ‘tipping point’ for TV networks everywhere?
-
10 hurdles as ‘old media’ dream of digital success
-
How ‘Generation N’ can put profit back into newspapers
-
Will the UK’s last Press baron go with the money and ditch national newspapers?
-
iPad comes to the rescue of magazines (sort of)
-
The big deal: aid or arms?
-
Will God help Milliband?
-
Who said print media was dead?
-
Microsoft plays poker with Apple
-
London’s Olympic tickets fiasco was predictable
-
Darkening Sky for Murdoch
-
Boris and Bloomberg offer new ways to revitalise New York and London
-
Virgin Radio encore
-
Rise of the mediatailer…
-
M&S bags the ‘green’ profit
-
‘Playboy’ and FT lead the fight to control Apple
-
Could this really be the beginning of the end for the mighty Reed Elsevier?
-
Business publishers in a new world where ‘need to know’ is not quite what it seems
-
Frank Bennack: modest elder statesman of media who will out-pace Murdoch
-
Queen Elizabeth: on top of the world
-
The chaos of ‘frequent flier’ points: a currency that needs changing
