What is the most successful magazine in the world? Is it Hearst’s feisty Cosmopolitan, published monthly in 58 countries and 34 languages? Or Conde Nast’s 120-year-old Vogue, the ultimate fashion statement in 19 countries? Or Time magazine, the first name in international news weeklies since 1923 ? Or could it be an altogether more surprising success: a…
Harry Potter keeps changing things
The book publishing and retailing business is in turmoil. Nothing new about that. But look at the momentous things, happening in the UK right now, that will transform the industry at speed: In October, J.K.Rowling is launching Pottermore.com to publish Harry Potter ebooks. The author, who 14 years ago kick-started a worldwide boom in book…
Magazines in the headlights
The BBC’s £165m mainly-UK magazines business notched up an impressive-sounding 9% increase in profits – just as it is about to be acquired by private equity firm Exponent. The £21.6m of profit from all the magazines including Radio Times, Top Gear, Gardeners World, Good Food etc is actually reckoned to be not much more than…
UK readers will miss Rupert Murdoch (honestly)
As predicted here and variously across the planet, Rupert Murdoch is in the fight of his life with politicians, regulators and courts in the US and UK. Leaving the mounting horrors aside, it is timely to examine the context for Mr Murdoch and News Corporation, viz: Newspapers represent under 20% (and falling) of News Corp’s…
And another thing about the ‘News of the World’…
The News of the World closure may have been a firewall for the storm threatening to envelop News Corp. It also, though, throws an interesting light on the fight by UK newspapers to survive in the era of always-on news. Yesterday’s punch-the-air televised exit of News of the World journalists who had just completed the…
UK phone hacking breaks open the box: what’s next?
News Corporation has been rocked by the latest phone hacking disclosure that its UK Sunday tabloid the News of the World was responsible in 2002 for hacking into the mobile phone of the murdered British teenager Milly Dowler and even, possibly, obstructing police investigations by deleting voicemail messages, when it was considered possible she might…
The power and vulnerability of Rupert Murdoch
This has been a big, bumpy month for the Rupert Murdoch-controlled News Corporation, marked by: UK Government approval to acquire the 61% of pay tv operator BskyB he does not already own Sale of the once mighty (but now loss-making) My Space social network site for $35m just six years after it was bought for…
UK dailies pay future price for a glorious past
Britons are proud of their national newspapers, even those who no longer read one. The country, whose pioneering railway network helped to create a host of newspapers that reached all parts of the kingdom by breakfast, can’t shake off its love affair with newsprint. Or can it? The fact is that the UK’s 11 paid-for…
Gina Rinehart may soon be world’s richest person – and is into media
Australians frequently refer to their nation’s “two speed” economy, which emphasises the commodities boom that has kept recession away for 20 years and counting. It also helps to explain the rising importance of the mining economies of Western Australia and Queensland in a country long dominated by the ‘old’ south eastern cities of Sydney and Melbourne,…
Who said print media was dead?
Let’s get it straight: newspapers and magazines will not be killed off by online media. But there will certainly be some deaths. Many titles will eventually close, many more will have to accept much lower levels of profitability, but some traditional publishers will be able to create substantial digital businesses, quite different from their existing…
