According to a report in the Financial Times today, Shortlist and the now defunct free magazine Sport talked at one point about a merger.The men's free weekly Sport magazine suspended publication last week after its French parent company, Sport Media & Strategy, went into administration.According to the FT, before its demise, Sport and ShortList held talks over a possible merger but ShortList is understood to have backed away.You can see it making sense. However, any leap like that, while it brings scale, would also incur extra costs at a time when Shortlist's backers (GLG, the hedge fund; DC Thomson, the Scottish publisher; and French Connection founder Stephen Marks) are sure to be nervous (already dealing with annual losses of £2.7m to August) in the current uncertainty about further exposure.On paper the combination would have brought together ShortList's 505,970 copies with Sport's 317,257 giving media buyers access to 800,000 large young urban readers. No one else would quite have that audience. Combined, its about five times as large as BBC Three ever got.The FT quoted Alan Brydon, head of press communication at MPG, saying it would have made an interesting proposition. "They would have an audience of about 850,000 across a Thursday and Friday and that is a very interesting joint sell. But it depends on whether the backers are prepared to do it, whether they are able to."But right now everything is on hold until we see what happens next. Free magazines cannot rack up losses indefinitely, but if and when the advertising climate improves then there is every reason to expect that the market will bounce back and expand.The situation is even more acute in the free newspaper market where Thelondonpaper and its rival London Lite are losing money hand over fist.With the Evening Standard now owned by Alexander Lebedev, you have to wonder how long Associated Newspapers will continue its commitment to London Lite? London can't really support two free evening newspapers. Does it even want to?Free magazines on the other hand offer more flexibility and more niches to explore. Be it women, entertainment or sport (again). And why not sport again? While Sport Media's effort was good, it was far from being compelling.Soutar and Shortlist have a three-year plan to become profitable, which he says is ahead of schedule in spite of more "short-term" advertising."If you are a mature title with a couple of months visibility, you sweat a little bit but for us that is a marvellous luxury. We are not part of a large and remote company under pressure. It is fair enough to question our business model but we have a critical mass with more than 500,000 copies and a national footprint in 11 UK cities," he told the FT.
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Hi Gordon,
What a shame, as you say, it could have worked brilliantly.
Now everyone in the media loses for not supporting the magazine.
This is the danger of Freebies.
If the media will not support (£) new ideas who does it support?
Gordon Macmillan
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