IPC Closes Film & TV Week

IPC has made the shock announcement that it is closing its new listings title Film & TV Week after only ten weeks. The last issue will go on sale today.

In announcing the closure, Nigel Davidson, managing director of the IPC Weeklies Group, said: “This market is a notoriously difficult one to enter, and we always expected Film & TV Week to be a niche title, but despite its being a strong product editorially, we have been disappointed with its copy sales.”

IPC spent around £1.1 million in promoting the 80 pence title, which was aimed at ABC1 readers between the ages of 20 and 44. It was billed as a rival to the Radio Times and had aimed at a circulation of 150,000. IPC say that no redundancies will be made.

Film & TV Week is the second weekly title to close this year after a short life-span. Only two weeks ago Bauer closed its Enjoy! title which had launched in September. Sales for the title were estimated to have reached a disappointing 130,000, compared to Woman which sells around 828,000. Bauer was slightly less ruthless than IPC and gave Enjoy! a facelift in January in a move aimed at saving the title. While IPC are not saying what Film & TV Week‘s sales were, the figure must have been extremely low to close the title so soon without any ‘rescue’ attempts.

Although the TV listings market is relatively stable in terms of circulation *(see Jul-Dec ’96 ABC Figures: TV Listings & Entertainment Magazine
Sector), the growth in the quantity and quality of newspaper TV listing sections has probably curtailed what otherwise might have been an area for greater growth. It also now appears that the market could not sustain the launch of another weekly TV listings title.

IPC: 0171 261 5000