News Mags closes Alpha magazine and hands specialist titles to Express Publications
News Magazines is to close sports title Alpha magazine and license most of its specialist titles to Express Publications, Mumbrella has learned.
Express Publications will take on Modern Fishing, Modern Boating, Overlander 4WD, Truckin’ Life, Live To Ride, 2Wheels, Chopper, Tattoo and Scooter along with their websites.
Alpha was originally launched by News Ltd as a bundled sale with its papers on news stand.
But sales struggled after it was moved to a standalone sale.
The last set of Audit Bureau of Circulation figures saw Alpha fall by more than 11% to 65,000.
Alpha is the latest male focused title to bite the dust. When ACP closed Ralph last year, it decided to continue with an online edition. But Mumbrella understands there will be no online second life for Alpha.
And in December Fairfax Media decided to close Sport & Style, weeks after launching an iPad app.
News Magazines’ decision to close Alpha comes five months after launching an iPad edition for the title. iTunes reviews suggest that the app suffered a number of technical problems.
The agreement with Express Publications begins next week.
News Magazines’ CEO Sandra Hook said: “Our specialist titles are known for passionately serving their engaged and loyal readers. We believe that Express Publications with its extensive portfolio of niche and specialist magazines will be an ideal home for these titles.”
Speaking of Alpha, Hook said: “Closing a title is never an easy decision. The Alpha team has worked consistently and diligently in an extremely competitive and fragmented environment. Throughout its publication, Alpha has maintained solid rapport with its loyal and passionate sports-loving readers and advertisers.”
A staement from News Magaiznes said: “Regrettably some redundancies are anticipated.”
News Magazines will continue to publish its other specialist titles Big League and Australian Golf Digest under licence to the NRL and Condé Nast.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Magazines is one big game of musical chairs at the moment, innit? Hope the staff land on their feet….
I’ve been subscribing to this mag for two years and the quality has gone downhill the whole time. Clearly no money was being put into it – it went from great, well-written profile pieces to cheap Q&As, probably done via email. The cover photography was increasingly poor and the massive emphasis on AFL and NRL was lopsided – it had to cater for both NSW and Vic markets so hedged its bets by focusing on both codes, which just wasn’t right half the time.
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Never nice to see anything close, but in reality ALPHA was truly BAD and a lesson in how NOT to do a magazine in an already difficult market. The business model was wrong ($2 cover price), the content was weak at best (as it was an advertising model over a circ one), it wasn’t remotely sexy, the fashion/grooming was totally lame and everything’s bigger, better, faster, freer and more shinier on the web. It will be interesting to see if the remaining men’s mags can pick-up the readers from all the closures or the category itself is on its last legs.
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That’s a shame, I picked up Alpha occasionally and I didn’t mind it. The content wasn’t groundbreaking and I usually skipped over quite a bit of stuff about sports I have no interest in, but it wasn’t bad for a read on the train.
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Wow, watch all titles picked up by Express turn to rubbish immediately.
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Lachlan won’t be happy…….
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AGREED with I’mwithstupid… That three month lead time for Express’s cheap off-shore printing means these once premium quality monthlies will be so out of date by the time they hit the newsstands. It’s the loyal readers who will suffer.
Also, I think that we are going to see a massive drop off in creativity and quality of these publications as Express cuts costs (and subsequently, corners) left, right and centre.
It’s a real shame to see the big publishers losing faith in their niche titles and their staff, tossing them to the curb like that. I wonder if ACP or Pac will follow suit?
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