Hot Gossip

The British appetite for celebrity news appears insatiable. The continued success of all the gossip magazines in this set of ABCs highlights the strong demand for news and pictures of A-list, B-list and even C-list stars.

“No one thought the celebrity magazine was going to work in this market to start with and now that’s demonstrably untrue,” says Sally Cartwright, publishing director at Hello!.

Chief among the beneficiaries of this demand for star news was EMAP Elan’s Heat, which recorded a 137.6 per cent rise, with sales of 172,311 for the period July to December 2000.

EMAP Elan chief executive Barry McIlheney says the improvement was a just reward for EMAP’s commitment to the title, which struggled to hit circulation targets when it was first launched and was revamped in April.

McIlheney attributes the title’s success to its ability to add a strong female element to the “entertainment fixated” readership it had previously attracted. “Over the last period, 20-something women have responded dramatically to Heat’s weekly diet of celebrity gossip served up with refreshing candour and a hint of irreverence,” he says.

He adds that the company is now looking at extending the brand, including the possibility of a masthead TV show and an awards event. “We are now at a position where we are beginning to have a dialogue with people we completely trust,” says editor Mark Frith. “I think we will have a TV presence within 12 months.”

Heat’s improvement was the best performance in the celebrity weekly market but Now also did well, up 20 per cent with a circulation of 475,571.

IPC Connect managing director Linda Lancaster-Gaye says the title has grown by 55 per cent in the past three years, ahead of the rest of the sector. She adds that brand extensions such as Now Star Diet and Fitness – launched in January – and Now Star Style – which recorded a debut ABC of 159,698 – would be increasing their frequency in the “nearish future”.

OK! and Hello! were also up 6.8 per cent at 586,176 and 1.5 per cent at 502,679 respectively. However, Hello!’s Cartwright denies the court action over its unofficial pictures of the Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas wedding has hit sales. “We were three days late on sale with that issue but there was so much publicity in the newspapers that it did not affect us,” she says.

MediaCom deputy press director Claudine Collins says the success of the celebrity mags would be widely imitated. “Every one of them has gone up,” she notes, adding that she expects other magazines to increase their celebrity content to satisfy this demand.

Magazine publishers are also fighting fiercely for the hearts and minds of couch potatoes. The arrival of TV Choice, H Bauer’s new listings weekly, may have helped develop the radio and TV guides market by 11.1 per cent year on year but it certainly wasn’t a case of everyone’s a winner.

TV Choice was down from its debut figure in the last period, falling 6.7 per cent to 732,259. In fact IPC’s TV & Satellite Week was the only title to improve year on year, reporting sales up by 22.4 per cent at 221,018.

Among the casualties was IPC’s TV Times, down 12.9 per cent year on year at 688,556, although the situation was much improved period on period with a fall of only 2.3 per cent.

IPC was bullish about its progress. It claimed to have increased its market share by 0.5 per cent, to take 50.6 per cent of the TV listings market.

IPCtx managing director Caroline Ward says it has taken time following the launch of TV Choice to persuade consumers that price isn’t the only criterion on which to buy a listings title. The company has invested extensively in TV Times, with a redesign in October and a TV campaign in November, although only six weeks of this activity is reflected in these latest figures.

Ward is positive that the title can move ahead having weathered the TV Choice storm. “I do not doubt we can turn it back to stability and I intend to achieve growth,” she says.

H Bauer’s TV Quick has also suffered – down 13.4 per cent – with Inside Soap down 8.5 per cent and All About Soap falling by 14.6 per cent year on year.

Julie Lavington, publishing director at TV Quick and TV Choice, says the latter’s launch had helped H Bauer boost its share of the listings market to 25 per cent. “It’s the first time the TV listings market has been over 5 million since 1996. For the TV listing market overall, TV Choice has been very successful,” she says.

Top TV listings

At the top of the TV listings chart there are less dramatic changes, with What’s On TV, falling 2.3 per cent to 1.7 million and Radio Times down 5.4 per cent year on year but up 1.1 per cent period on period to end up at 1,264,315.

BBC Worldwide claims its Christmas edition outsold its rivals and was the best selling issue of any magazine in the UK last year, helping the company claim a 30 per cent share of the festive listings market.

“Radio Times also delivered the highest profits in its 77-year history,” says publisher Ashley Munday.

Peter Teague, managing director UK region at BBC Worldwide, admits that while TV Choice has had an impact, it isn’t chasing the same readers as the BBC’s Radio Times. “When I look through TV Choice and Radio Times, to me it doesn’t look like we’re looking at two things in the same market,” he says.

For the first time, the National Magazine Company’s figures include the Gruner & Jahr titles it purchased last year. Year on year the portfolio is down 2.9 per cent, although period on period the picture is much improved with a rise of 6.7 per cent to a total average net circulation per issue of 3,357,092.

Delayed impact

Deputy managing director Duncan Edwards says that although the company took possession of the titles on August 31, the real impact of its ownership is likely to be felt in the ABCs for July to December 2001.

“We’ve spent a lot of time and effort understanding these brands and consumers,” he says. “That’s a process we’re going through at the moment. We will see evolutionary progress on Best and Prima during the first half of the year.”

And he reaffirmed the company’s commitment to Esquire’s up-market positioning despite its continuing sales drop, down 39 per cent year on year and down 13 per cent period on period to 61,271, adding that newsstand sales have now stabilised.

“Men who want to read a refined, intelligent men’s magazine are rarer than men who only want to look at girls with no clothes,” he says. “The advertisers love the fact that we’ve done this.”

MediaCom’s Collins warns that NatMags can’t expect advertisers to support the strategy unquestioningly if sales continue to fall. “If we see another decline in the next ABCs then it will probably get a lot of fall-out,” she warns.

Elsewhere in the men’s market there was good news. FHM was up two per cent year on year to 716,679; and while Loaded may have been down 5.4 per cent year on year at 351,353, it did record its first period-on-period rise for two years up 0.4 per cent

IPC’s Later performed less admirably – down 22.4 per cent year on year and 8.8 per cent period on period. The older men’s magazine now sells 70,267. Other casualties in this sector include Sky Magazine, down 35.2 per cent year on year at 65,080, Focus down 17.2 per cent at 55,076 and Arena, which dropped by 21.3 per cent to 37,080.

Hotdog, the movie magazine from James Brown’s I Feel Good, recorded a debut of 39,254. The previous entrant to the wacky film buffs market, EMAP’s Neon, was also selling about 40,000 at the time of its demise.

Other high-profile debutantes include Dennis’ PS Magazine at 100,446, BBC History Magazine at 50,082, Nova was on target at 75,142, and Future’s Official PlayStation 2, which came in at 81,883 after three issues.

Zap, the magazine for Telewest’s digital cable subscribers, which launched in September, made its first appearance in the charts with a circulation of 209,978.

Business to customer mags

The magazine with the highest distribution was O Magazine, a title produced by John Brown Contract Publishing for mobile phone network Orange. Its circulation was helped by the introduction of Just Talk, a magazine for pay-as-you-go users of the network. Its distribution of 3,342,111 added to those for Orange’s contract and business customers took O Magazine Group up to 4,939,177.

Elsewhere in the customer magazine market, the growth of digital TV has boosted Redwood’s Sky Customer Magazine. It now has 3,873,637 sales, an increase of 212 per cent year on year and 46.5 per cent period on period. The analogue edition was closed in November, reflecting the changes to the pay-TV market.

With Sky Digital’s subscription base still growing rapidly, this title is likely to continue to rise. Redwood expects circulation to hit 5 million by June.

While individual publishers all had their share of winners and losers, the PPA welcomed the release of figures showing the overall magazine market had grown. Average magazine circulation was up from 131,835 to 148,934 and total circulation in December hit 78.8 million, a rise of 15.7 per cent.

“It is encouraging to see that once again more sectors are showing growth than decline and the average magazine circulation has increased,” says PPA marketing director Philip Cutts.