Our Time launches on Monday, three days after Archant’s Let’s Talk!
Archant is taking its all-conquering Let’s Talk! magazine format for the over-50s into Cambridgeshire.
It launches this Friday but faces competition for the grey pound from the Cambridge Evening News, which is launching the rival Our Time.
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Let’s Talk! launched in Norfolk in 2002 and in the space of a year had become the top-selling monthly consumer title in the county with a sale of 28,000. With its mix of nostalgia, competitions, cookery and DIY, it has since launched localised versions in Suffolk and Essex.
The Cambridge Evening News got wind of Archant’s plans to move onto its patch and decided to launch a spoiler, which hits newsagents on Monday.
Like Let’s Talk!, it has 116 pages and is priced £1. Cambridge Newspapers claims it is backing the launch with a £50,000 marketing campaign.
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A spokesman said plans for the launch were accelerated following news that Archant’s neighbouring Eastern Daily Press operation was to launch a version of Let’s Talk! into Cambridgeshire.
He said: “Our Time will contain a full mix of features on homes, gardens, fashion, travel, financial advice, quizzes and sport, as well as local and celebrity interviews and pictorial nostalgia features.”
It is being staffed by journalists from the Cambridgeshire Evening News, supplemented by freelance contributors.
But the company says it plans to put a dedicated editorial team in place.
The new Let’s Talk! edition covers Cambridgeshire and bordering areas and is being produced by the team from Let’s Talk! Norfolk.
Editor Gwyn Jones said: “We had a lot of letters from people in the Anglia West area asking us if we were going to launch an edition for their region.
We will be following the highly successful formula which we have developed for a county over-50s magazine.
“Regular features and columns on health, beauty, leisure, gardening and the home, as well as interviews with national celebrities, sit alongside nostalgia and readers’ memories and pictures.”
Both titles have Lulu on the cover, although Archant’s Let’s Talk! claimed to have the exclusive interview.
By Dominic Ponsford
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