‘Future Of Magazines’ Seminar Looks At Consolidation

Yesterday’s MediaTel Group seminar on the ‘Future of Consumer Magazines’ saw National Magazine Company chief executive Duncan Edwards say that he has no regrets about being outbid for Emap’s consumer magazine division, which was bought by Bauer in January.

He said: It’s publicly known that we were a bidder. Clearly we didn’t put the highest price on the table. Do I have any regrets that we should have put a higher price on the table? No I don’t.

“We made a judgement about the future of certain large assets and, like most publishers, there are a small number of large assets which make a large proportion of the money. We made a judgement about the future of those assets; time will tell whether we were correct or not. Clearly, Bauer made a different judgement and therefore were able to put a higher price on the table.”

Speaking about consolidation in general, Edwards said that this is only natural with the current shape of the industry.

“The magazine industry is quite fragmented, there are a large number of what I would describe as medium sized players, maybe a dozen, plus the 500/600 mom & pop businesses as well, and 12 or so reasonably sizeable businesses – its a large number of players in a market which is relatively low growth, and so it is completely normal that consolidation follows.

“My sense is that there’ll be more to come. I can’t tell you what they’ll be, but I think the economic rationale for consolidation is absolutely overpowering and the market will inevitably respond.”

On the subject of private ownership, panellists Ray Snoddy, media journalist, and Mike Soutar, chief executive of ShortList Media, agreed that sometimes private owners are able to take risks that are not available to other types of owner.

Soutar said: “I think the majority of magazines are now in private ownership and that can be really good, because private owners can tend to take a longer term view of existing brands, and they can take the opportunity to reinvent where they think there is a long term future.”

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