Two swallows do not a summer make. But in the United States FMH – the biggest of the lad’s magazines – has made an undignified retreat. It will maintain its online presence but there will be no printed version.

At the same time Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. (a name to conjure with) has shot down one more magazine: Shock, which is its American version of the successful French photo monthly called Choc.

Time magazine, in a major article in the Financial Times on December 11 said that Time magazine, and its many associates, will focus more and more on the Internet because that is where the advertising money is heading.

Does this mean the end of magazines? No, of course not. But it does, I think, mean the end of the starting of new magazines with hopes of big circulation and big advertising sales.

EMap, which publishes FHM, has taken quite a major beating in the United States. It will not be keen on experiencing that again.

Meanwhile in newspapers even the New York Times is struggling.

The Web has gnawed away at the Times’ ad revenue, and as the cost of newsprint soars, the newspaper itself is literally shrinking. Next year, the Times will be 1.5 inches narrower, with 5 percent less space for news. Under publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., whose family has operated the paper since 1896 and maintains majority ownership, the company’s shares have lost half their value since 2002.

So it is moving into a new area which is, a bit frightening for newspaper publishers. The New York Times is tying Expedia.com travel booking service right in to its travel section. The Times and Expedia are sharing the revenue generated, although exact terms were not disclosed.

Vivian Schiller, senior VP-general manager, NYTimes.com said, ‘We have two major revenue streams, our advertising revenue and our subscriber revenue through Times Select. The most important thing for us, especially in terms of our advertising base, is to grow our audience, get them coming back more often and get them to look at more pages.’

Jonathan Landman, deputy managing editor at the Times, put it this way: ‘We’re not going to be Amazon or eBay.’

No ducky, but you have sold out and it will get worse. The experience in Britain shows this.

In television the move is also towards the Internet. The news that the British BBC plans to make hundreds of episodes of its popular British television programs available on a file-sharing network is an indication.

The BBC has done a deal between the commercial arm of the company, BBC Worldwide, and the Java-based BitTorrent client technological firm, Azureus. The file sharing means that users of Azureus` Zudeo software in the United States can legally download titles, such as  Little Britain. And that on the day they are aired for the first time. This coincides with the news that the BBC, which is paid for by compulsory subscription, is not getting a rise next year. Indeed, it is getting a slightly less money if you allow for inflation.

Many critics – Richard Ingrams in The Independent newspaper leading the charge – have asked why ANY money should be given to the BBC. So the BBC, perhaps in defense, has embraced the Internet and this new move shows that it sees the writing on the wall.

If entertainment is available elsewhere for free why should you pay the BBC – protected by some of the most severely enforced and Draconian laws in the world – serious money for that which you do not need.

In films as in television. There is now no major studio that does not grasp the power of YouTube. It is almost a given that a feature show is going to release teaser clips for YouTube and major advertisers are going to make what you make care to think of as YouTube original clips running about two to three minutes.

Which means the whole balance of power is shifting. Instead of resting with monolithic giants who think that only way to deal with revolution is to keep shouting ‘piracy’ in a strangulated scream it will rest more and more with the creators. And they will know whether they have got it right within a week of releasing it to YouTube.

Source: AdAge and research

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Entry was posted on Saturday, December 30th, 2006 at 8:44 am under Internet, Technology.

Read more entries by Gareth Powell.
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