Dummy of the new-look Media Week, left and centre, shows a picture cover and more in-depth spreads
Media Week is to drop in size to a traditional magazine format with a picture-led cover as part of a radical overhaul.
Media Week hopes the relaunch will help it to “set the agenda” by changing its on-sale day from Thursday to Tuesday, ahead of Campaign, Marketing and Marketing Week.
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The revamp includes a new masthead, heavier paper stock, more analysis and double the pagination. A careers section has been added to boost advertising and the cover price will increase from £2.10 to £2.40.
Editor Tim Burrowes said: “The thinking behind it was to have it available for more of the week. Media people are really incredibly media savvy.
If something significant breaks they will probably have read about it on the web, so what we have been moving towards is to offer them analysis in the print version. So they’ll get what happened on our website and why it happened in the print version. Of the marketing press we’ll be out first and that’s a major opportunity for us.”
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Media Week will have three analysis spreads every week instead of one or two pages. It will also have fewer but longer news stories. “We will have to be more selective and make judgements on what is significant to the reader. It is a totally new discipline for all of us,” Burrowes told Press Gazette.
The change in format, designed by Esterson Associates, will see the title move off the plinth and on to the news-stand. A new publication date will also mean sweeping changes to deadlines and could involve some staff having to work over the weekend.
Burrowes said the cover star would be planned almost a month in advance. “Assuming it’s going to be a features-based cover, we’ll plan the cover three or four weeks before, but it will be reviewed until the last minute.
If ITV burns down over the weekend, we’ll change the cover and put that on the front.” Burrowes said the overall investment was about £250,000.
Despite the increased focus on analysis and features, he insisted there was no chance of Media Week becoming a monthly. “The market wants it and there is commercial support for a weekly product. The media industry demands to be taken seriously so this is an attempt to give them the product they deserve.”
Backed by an advertising campaign on the London Underground and in the national press, the relaunch issue is out on Tuesday, following a promotional issue featuring 16 blank pages of the old format. The investment follows the appointment of Burrowes last year from Reed, where he was editor of Hospital Doctor.
Media Week is published by Quantum Business Media, which is also Press Gazette’s publisher.
By Ruth Addicott
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