Media Week

The Telegraph is normally held up as the epitome of the modern converged newsroom, but cities such as Manchester are proving that there is plenty of innovative practice going on in regional media as well.

MEN Media also has a converged newsroom, centred on a hub that comprises ingredients including the Manchester Evening News, Metro, 20 paid-for and free weekly newspapers, Channel M TV and some of MEN owner Guardian Media Group’s radio stations. All these elements are integrated online to produce a mix the media group hopes will help regenerate its fortunes from its roots in the very tough traditional newspaper market. It is also designed to offer a more attractive proposition for advertisers, and the group even has a production arm that creates adverts for brands and businesses to run on Channel M, which attracts 306,000 viewers a week according to Ipsos.

One of the major planks in the strategy was the decision to give the daily paper away in the centre of Manchester, while still charging for it in the suburbs. The paper now sells 82,000 copies and gives 98,000 away, for a total circulation of 180,000. On the face of it this was risky, but it seems to have resulted in increased exposure to the brand and made the paper a ubiquitous presence around the city. Manchester has a large percentage of people living in the centre of town, especially young people who are less inclined to pay for a newspaper.

Newsagents have apparently been won over because they still get paid for distributing the free paper – though at a lesser per-copy rate than before – but benefit from the increased footfall into their shops. MEN Media has also done a deal to distribute men’s weekly free magazine ShortList alongside the newspaper on a Thursday.

The theory is that the status quo was producing a business model in inexorable decline and that it was untenable as a long-term strategy. Media groups were going to have to bite the bullet and offer their product for free eventually, so they might as well get on with it.

This resulted in the group's online network attracting 1.5 million unique users and 9.5 million page views last November, according to Google Analytics.

The business environment is still very tough for local media groups and the strategy will take time to reach fruition in terms of real business benefits to the balance sheet, but MEN Media is certainly an example of a group that is sweating its assets and making them work together much more effectively than it did before.

The only surprise, and a possible question mark about the strategy, is that traditional newspaper-based media companies in other cities haven’t followed suit. What do they know that MEN Media doesn’t? Or are they just not as far-sighted?

Having just put the finishing touches to our special feature on media minister James Purnell and the future of government policy on broadcasting and advertising, you can imagine how thrilled we were at Media Week Towers last Thursday afternoon, when we heard the news that he was moving from the department and being parachuted in to fill the gap at work and pensions left by his disgraced colleague Peter Hain.

The Purnell piece is still completely valid (honest guv), containing as it does the DCMS's vision of the policy future and outlining the direction of travel that one can only assume will be followed by Purnell's hastily appointed replacement and former flatmate, Andy
Burnham.

Purnell had taken on board lobbying from the industry, highlighting the immense contribution advertising makes to the UK economy - 1.48% of gross domestic product - and seemed to have some interesting ideas regarding TV and radio regulation and a keen awareness of the convergent landscape epitomised by new media giants such as Google.

Burnham has worked in the department before, as a special adviser to former culture secretary Chris Smith. He hails from the same generation as Purnell and Ofcom chief executive and former Tony Blair adviser Ed
Richards. And he comes from the Treasury, so he has good contacts with the real powerbrokers that control the Government's purse strings at Whitehall.

One can only hope that he will continue the progressive work set in motion by his predecessor, who we wish well in his new role around the corner at Caxton House.

Sir Martin Sorrell’s opinions regarding the advertising market are generally treated like gold dust, so it is always worth taking notice when he makes one of his pronouncements on the future.

The WPP chief executive believes 2008 will be good for advertising but that the pain will kick in during 2009. He cites the US presidential campaign and the Beijing Olympics as cause for comfort amongst the ad community in the face of those talking us into a recession this year.

Sorrell continually promotes China and India as the engines of global economic growth for the future, and of course there is a lot of truth in that theory. But then, as his agency network has a 15% market share in China, he would say that wouldn’t he. There is another school of thought that consumer consumption in China is only a tenth of that in the US, and that in the short term it won’t be enough to counter the downturn elsewhere.

ITV’s chairman Michael Grade and IPA president Moray McLennan are among those who have recently publicly stated that we are in danger of talking ourselves into a recession, especially in the media. But there is no point in burying our heads in the sand – the economic indicators are not good, and the media sector has to make plans accordingly.

We know that when recessions loom investment in advertising spend, and especially the media part of the matrix, is one of the first elements to be reviewed.

But in the last downturn, in 2001, media consultancy Billetts came up with some sage advice for clients pondering their strategy in a recession. An analysis of TV advertising in a previous recession in the early 1990s showed that the highest-performing brands increased their total spends by 7%, achieving an average rise in market share of 1.1%. The lowest-performing brands had reduced their total TV advertising spend by 8% and their average market share dropped by 1.6%.

It is the job of media agencies and media owners to remind their clients of this and persuade them that maintaining a significant advertising presence during a recession is actually smart business practice, and that it is possible to gain a much stronger foothold in the market as a result.

And, despite what Sir Martin says, it would probably be worth taking this message on board now rather than waiting for 2009.

It’s coming up to the usual February half-yearly magazine ABC time and, as is becoming usual these days, Media Week is faced with a quandary as to how to cover it.

On the one hand, there is little doubt that print magazine circulations are in general declining. Our sneak previews into the men’s and women’s monthly and weekly markets show no signs that this trend is set to end.

On the other hand, as Dennis Publishing’s chief executive James Tye points out in this week’s print issue of Media Week, the web sites and digital operations of all magazines are expanding exponentially and attracting lots of traffic and unique users. Tye points out that Maxim now attracts 776,000 monthly unique users, over twice the audience the print title had at its peak. Digital-only products such as Dennis’s Monkey are also being successfully developed. So, the news isn’t all bad for the magazine sector.

Now it’s not Media Week’s job to be a cheerleader for the sector; it is our job to report facts and trends accurately and in a balanced fashion, highlighting negatives as well as positive developments in equal measure.

However, as the premier title for the media industry - print and online hopefully - we have no desire to foster an atmosphere of doom and gloom about any media sector, including magazines.

But it is significant that Dennis, whilst naturally delighted at the traffic it is attracting to its digital brand extensions, chooses not to obtain an ABCe certificate for Maxim.

Until all magazine publishers, ABC and ABCe can get round a table and thrash out a scenario where digital traffic is also measured, or an overall reach figure is calculated for each magazine brand, the magazine sector is faced with the prospect of being hamstrung by the biannual doom-fest that the magazine ABCs are becoming.

Media Week has gone Facebook crazy this week. Our lead feature dissects the social network - or social utility as the boys from Palo Alto prefer to define themselves - and its commercial potential.

We also have an interview with Facebook's first European employee - UK commercial director Blake Chandlee - that goes live on Media Week TV today. And we have set up a Media Week group on Facebook, so sign up and let us know what you think.