Magazine
industry chiefs have been rethinking their strategies in the run-up to
this week’s ABC circulation figures, with Burda reportedly shelving
plans for a second UK launch, Bauer cutting 10 listings staff and
CosmoGIRL! abandoning its tri-weekly experiment, writes Alyson Fixter.
Bauer’s
mid-market TV title TV Quick is now duplicating the listings section
from sister title TV Choice, despite costing 35p more – leading to ten
redundancies in its listings department.
TV Quick saw a
circulation fall of 10 per cent year-on-year in the last ABCs and is
expected to show a further fall this time round.
Rival IPC, which
kickstarted a price war earlier this year with a 10p cover price cut
for market leader What’s On TV, has criticised the move. Philippa
Brown, managing director of listings division IPC TX, said: “I never
thought I would see the day that the same content is being marketed as
two separate titles at two different prices.”
German publisher
Hubert Burdarelease an ABC figure, is rumoured to have given up on
plans to launch a second UK women’s magazine following the title’s
struggles.
Meanwhile, the National Magazine Company has turned
teen title CosmoGIRL! back into a monthly magazine after a
much-criticised attempt at going tri-weekly.
It is believed the mag will show a double-digit period-on-period sales decline.
However,
most of the season’s new launches are expected to show strong results
in the circulation figures: Conde Nast monthly Easy Living should meet
expectations of 200,000 sales a month and Emap’s weekly glossy Grazia
will post a figure above 150,000, while IPC’s Pick Me Up has recovered
from rumours of poor sales and is believed to have smashed the half a
million mark.
In the battle of the lads’ mags, Loaded is expected
to show signs it is stemming a long-term sales decline with a slight
year-on-year increase, following a price cut, relaunch and marketing
push.
In February’s ABCs, it recorded a year-on-year fall of 16 per cent and lost second place in the market to Maxim.
Media, whose true-life launch Full House is believed to be selling as few as 220,000 copies a week and will not
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