Blurred Keys

Village magizine to stop publishing

Vincent Browne's Village magazine is to cease publishing, he called the process a "suspension," and said to the Irish Independent that he hoped to resume printing in future. The magazine's website, Village.ie, will continue, although it is currently off-line for updating.

After previous cuts in the workforce, the three remaining staff will be let go.

He told the Irish Times the move is due to "a significant downturn in advertising and the cancellation of special contract publications we were undertaking for third parties."

Village was expecting to make a small profit this year, but the contract publications were central to this. In a recent interview with Marketing magazine Browne said: "My only backer, Michael Smith, lost about €260,000 and I lost in the region of €1.2 million. Village is going to be a marginal exercise but we can make money on contract publishing and we should make significant money on the website".

Vincent Browne interviewed (link)

Vincent Browne talks to Marketing magizine about getting sacked by RTE, his Nightly News show on TV3, the Sunday Tribune, what he thinks of Independent News & Media and much more. Read it here. (vie Fergus Cassidy)

Irish magazines: they’re giving them away?

Newspaper and magazines are often accused of putting their own twist on circulation and readership numbers, but the Phoenix’s ‘Fit to Print?’ recently* had an interesting angle on the latest ABC results for Irish magazines.

The Phoenix says that the ‘devil is in the detail’, showing that Magill has an average circulation figure of 14,985 but only 4,672 copies are sold at full price tag of €3.25.

Meanwhile about two thirds of Business & Finance’s 15,638 circulation is sold at half price or less and just under 3,000 more are just given away as free subscriptions.

The Dubliner also sells less then one third of 10,038 at under the cover price – 3,000 are sold at less then 50%, 2,410 at less then 10% of the cover price, and 1,350 are – again  – just given away.

The Phoenix says (and the ABC report confirms) that its 18,154 circulation includes “no discount sales or free copies”. ABC’s 'Island of Ireland Report' for December 2006 includes ABC certified magazines, newspapers, and websites, it can be viewed in PDF form here, or by visiting abc-ireland.ie.

(*Phoenix dated Febuary 23 2007 – apologies for the lack of Blurred Keys updates in recent weeks)