Nine Entertainment Co ‘set for assets fire sale’
Industry rumours have accelerated that Nine Entertainment Co may sell some of its assets, possibly including all or part of ACP Magazines.
Today’s Australian Financial Review reports that a “fire sale” could be on the cards, citing the company’s inability to keep up with its debts.
As well as the Nine Network and ACP, the company also includes group buying site Cudo and the NineMSN joint venture.
Today’s AFR suggests that Nine Entertainment Co’s worsening position is in part because of “a major write down of the struggling ACP magazine business”.
I wonder if they would sell individual titles? I just want the one………
Can’t happen fast enough. CVC paid to much and the sooner they get out, the better off everyone will be. I don’t think they’ll make their money back. Agree wholeheartedly with Matt Handbury’s comments to The Australian, “It has been sad to see what has been happening with magazines”, and “they could be doing a much better job of extracting value out of the advertising market” to quote just two of his comments. I’ll add that they need to invest some time and money in their people – that is, the people who create the content. People will pay for good content regardless of the medium.
Yes, Handbury’s enthusiasm for the magazine format is to be admired. And despite what people may think about CVC/ACP’s efforts, the cold reality is young people these days just don’t read magazines. Fact. It’s a dying medium that’s failing miserably in attracting a new audience. Ask anyone under the age of 25 what mags they read and I bet you the answer will be none or one at best. In the ‘old days’ if you wanted a review of a car you wanted to buy you bought a copy of Wheels. Wanted a recipe you got Women’s Weekly. That just doesn’t happen anymore. You’ve got a million other (and often cheaper/better) options. Kids/teens/young mens mags are closing all over the place. The only mags doing anything are dull food and gardening titles my Gran buys!
Good to see the AFR breaking news again
Fact. Facts espoused on Mumbrella rarely have a factual basis.
Really … “young people these days just don’t read magazines”. I wonder why the hell they are buying the copies of all those youth magazines – to cut out the pictures? I agree that they are buying less and reading more copy online but I am afraid Keith that you are projecting your personal experience onto an entire population.
@ Col Realtity… all the kids titles have closed, the young lads mags are closing, or on their deathbeds, Cleos and Cosmo all performing disastrously… Audited circulations on these magazines have plummeted, halved even over the past five years. What more “facts” do you need? ACP openly admits it can’t wait to offload these terrible performers and hang-on to its women’s stable (primarily aimed at women over 35). Nine wants to offload the entire mag division all together. That’s not my opinion. That’s a fact!!!!
Who says young people don’t read magazines? The two fastest growing mags in the country are Frankie and Game Informer, the latter winning two local awards just last week. Give younger readers the right content and they will buy it – churn out the same old tired stuff and they won’t.
@ Ivory tower. Agreed. I’d say the magazine industry’s best bet is the small, niche titles you outline, done by robust smaller publishers. I appreciate Frankie’s wheeled-out ad nauseam as the ‘shining light’, but in reality it’s one of the few shining lights at present. And, yes, I admit, I worked in the magazine industry for 15 years!
Keith, I think we may need to buy you a dictionary to find out what constitutes a ‘fact’.
Keith’s comment: “all the kids titles have closed”.
Fact: Total Girl (46,523), K-Zone (41,286), Little Angel (20,643), Mania (19,670). There is over 1.5 million copies sold each year (and God knows how many pass-on readers) – not bad if you think they are all closed.
Keith’s comment: “the young lads mags are closing, or on their deathbeds”.
Fact: Zoo (82,094), FHM (40,208) – there’s close to another 1.5 million paid copies a year.
Keith’s comment: “Cleos (sic) and Cosmo all performing disastrously”.
Fact: Yes circulations are well down – totally agree. Last audit Cleo (111,545), Cosmo (141,867), so there is another 3 million paid copies per annum with around $23m of cover price revenue – I’ll take that ‘disaster’ any day. It is your opinion that they are disasters. The fact is combined over a quarter of a million copies sold each issue.
Keith’s comment: “Nine wants to offload the entire mag division all together.”
Fact: Applause – agree that is a fact. Mind you, do you really think they would sell all titles in this increasingly cross-medium communications world? I’d be stunned if they did.
There is no argument that printed magazine circulations are dropping in the face of free online content. But to say that whole sectors have closed when they haven’t is just plain wrong – opinion over fact. Also remember that all the above data is for paid printed copies only. They do not include masthead content accessed online (generally the equivalent of looking at a page or two of an entire issue). But you would have to be loony to think that magazine publishers aren’t working out how to get paid subscription content online, so that their entire target can be counted as “paid circulation” … but that is my opinion and not necessarily a fact.
No Keith, it’s an opinion. !!!!!!! adds no credibility to your argument, however it does suggest that you are young and that you work in sales.
Would it be too much to ask that ACP pay its contributors on some sort of regular basis? If you are a freelancer, you wait months for the money you’re owed – probably because the bean counters are running the joint and there aren’t too many beans to counter any more. You are made to submit your invoices to an anonymous email address, you receive an automated response saying it’s been received and then …. nothing for months … and months. Unless it’s an exceptional circumstance, payment has been taken out of the hands of the editors and hived off to this uncontactable outside source. Welcome to journalism’s not so brave new world.
wow…. everyone sounds really fact-off with this whole situation.
@ John Grono. Is this enough “facts” for you, mate?
https://mumbrella.com.au/weekly-mags-abcs-zoo-bombs-who-climbs-the-week-flat-grazia-steady-64612
And the data on the kids magazines which according to you have “all closed”? So … in a word … No.
As I said “There is no argument that printed magazine circulations are dropping in the face of free online content.” and the data released yesterday support that opinion. The facts are that they are in decline for print copies. The terms “closed” and “deathbed” are merely opinions.
Yep, I’m no expert on kids’ magazines (I’m not sure how we got on the subject in the first place), but an industry built on the discretionary spend of four year olds sounds a very shaky proposition to me.
Speaking at yesterday’s Magazine Week conference in Sydney yesterday, Steve Allen predicted that from 2010-2013 the industry would shed 20 million magazine sales a year (http://www.bandt.com.au/news/m.....me-changer).
You talk about the men’s category – five years ago FHM was doing 140K (now 40K), Ralph was doing 130K (finished), Alpha 100K (finished), Men’s Health 65K (now 70K). And now they are the facts!!!!
As they say, if you’re using print and ink you’re using last century’s technology!