Douglas McCabe was quoted in an article on Glamour magazine, which announced yesterday that it would relaunch as a “digital first” beauty brand, with its final monthly magazine coming out next month. Although the Condé Nast title will publish a “collectible” edition every six months, the new direction reflects alarm within the publishing industry about the long-term future of beauty and celebrity magazines. Douglas said “circulation has been declining very rapidly across magazines generally but the women’s sector in particular, really since the smartphone became mass market.”

Douglas McCabe was quoted in an article on the magazine world, where even the most prestigious titles have been challenged by the never-ending penetration of the internet and its abundance of free news and entertainment. With circulation and advertising revenues under pressure on both sides of the Atlantic magazines are facing an increasingly uncertain future. In fact, Magna Global, a media buying agency, expects magazines’ global advertising revenues to fall 13 per cent this year, while Enders Analysis, a media research group, has warned that the consumer magazine market was reaching “an existential threshold”. Douglas said “the industry is shrinking, and the decline seems to be accelerating both in circulation and in advertising — for print and online”. In the longer term, magazine publishers still have to work out what to do about the internet. He added “the way print advertising always worked was advertisers would pay for a magazine’s audience but also for the environment and the context”, but online magazines “have nothing like the same context and resonance” because a reader might stumble across an article on Facebook or Twitter and then immediately go somewhere else. Publishers, he says, have been “chasing a myth about digital advertising. In print they might have 100,000 readers while online they can get 10m. But that’s irrelevant because the 100,000 are the right 100,000 and more valuable”. Online advertising rates continue to lag print rates at their peak so in chasing large online readerships, magazines have “diluted the very essence of their brand . . . they have lost sight of what audience targeting really means”.

Douglas McCabe was quoted in an article on Time Inc, who wants to sell its UK magazines division, including well-known titles such as Country Life, TV Times and the NME, as part of a wider shake-up of the struggling US publishing group. The move is part of what the company called a “strategic transformation programme” and comes after Time abandoned plans to sell itself in April, ending months of speculation over the future of the group which owns Time, People and Sports Illustrated. On Friday Time reported a 17 per cent fall in second quarter print and other advertising revenues, and confirmed a $400m cost-savings programme. Time, formerly known as IPC, is one of the UK’s biggest magazine publishers. According to data from Enders Analysis the company’s titles attracted the highest annual circulation in the UK in 2016 with 168.7m. Douglas said that while the move by Time was not a shock, it was still a “big decision” for the US group. Adding that “the UK is a very important territory, probably the biggest outside the US. But print ads are tough, digital advertising hasn’t taken off and its market share is being threatened by bloggers and other social media online”.

Claire Enders was quoted in an article on the UK Culture Secretary, Karen Bradley, concerns over corporate governance failures at Rupert Murdoch's Fox, and lack of procedures of broadcast compliance for Fox News in the UK. Recent scandals at Fox News are threatening to derail Rupert Murdoch’s proposed £11.7bn takeover of European pay-TV group Sky after the UK government signalled that it was likely to widen an investigation by regulators into the deal. In a significant shift, the culture secretary said she was now likely to refer the bid to the Competition and Markets Authority on whether 21st Century Fox’s acquisition of Sky shares it does not own would comply with UK broadcasting standards. Her shift in position, which followed intensive campaigning from anti-Murdoch groups and a cross-party group of MPs, also overruled a recommendation from the UK media regulator Ofcom, prompting some analysts to question whether the move was politically motivated. Claire said “this was a political decision. It’s very peculiar to override Ofcom despite no change to their advice”.

Claire Enders was quoted in an article on the announcement by Karen Bradley, the UK culture secretary, on the Sky/Fox bid. Ms Bradley said that she was minded to widen a referral to regulators about the £11.7bn deal, to include scrutiny of corporate governance controls at Fox News. Ms Bradley raised new concerns about the transaction, overruling a recommendation from Ofcom, the media watchdog, that regulators consider only the deal’s impact on the UK media market. Claire said “Ofcom hasn’t changed its mind. “There is no new news, but the secretary of state has decided to go for the safest option to protect her from a judicial review. This shows the government just needs a quiet time”.

Douglas McCabe was quoted in an article on the Express, once the best-selling newspaper in the world, which could be heading for new ownership. On Friday, Trinity Mirror, publisher of the Daily and Sunday Mirror, as well as 150 local UK titles, said it was in exclusive talks to acquire the Express and Star newspapers, along with the magazine assets owned by Mr Desmond’s parent company, Northern and Shell. Although both sides stressed that a deal is still some way off, Trinity’s renewed interest — the two sides tried but failed to clinch a deal back in 2015 — presents Mr Desmond, 65, with the opportunity to bail out of the rapidly shrinking newspaper business. Throughout Mr Desmond’s time in charge, the Express group has posted healthy profits. But during his ownership, the daily newspaper has been eclipsed by rival the Daily Mail, with circulation falling from more than 1m at the time of Mr Desmond’s takeover in 2000, to just below 400,000 today. Douglas said “every publisher has had to make cuts over the past few years. But the Express group has been more ruthless than most”.

Matti Littunen was quoted in an article on the growing numbers of people using mobile devices to access social media or watch films and popular television boxed sets. Accordingly, Enders Analysis research published yesterday showed that for the first time more than half of the total number of minutes spent online by Britons is via mobile devices, with more than 36 million people spending an average of two hours accessing the internet on their phones or tablets every day. Matti said that bigger screens, the availability of faster and better connections and the rising popularity of streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime were helping to drive higher levels of smartphone use. He added that the rising level of smartphone penetration was being driven further by “changing attitudes” towards banking, ecommerce and dealing with local government. Increasingly, this was encouraging people to perform everyday tasks online that previously they would have done manually. “It’s only logical that for people who don’t need a big screen, they will gradually shift towards mobile only”.

François Godard was quoted in an article on football sports rights. BT and Sky are paying a combined £1.7 billion per season for live domestic rights for the Premier League until 2019, betting that the fireworks and furore surrounding matches will bring in subscribers and advertisers. Instead of enjoying a clear path to their goal of happy punters and booming profits, the two broadcasters have challengers encroaching on the pitch. On one side are the pirates - a third of Premier League fans watched games regularly via illegal streams - and on the other are the giants, with speculation rife that the likes of Amazon, Google and Facebook want to muscle in on the game. It is clear where immediate attention is focused. Piracy disturbs some BT and Sky shareholders — with the broadcasters airing 42 and 126 fixtures, respectively, each year — as much as it frustrates their paying subscribers. François suggested that the heavily-promoted move “reveals they may have some concerns about take up”. BT investors “may become uncomfortable” if its rights investment continues to grow, he added that Sky also could be tied down because its room to lift prices “may be very limited”.

Douglas McCabe was quoted in an article on The Guardian plan to create a joint commercial sales operation. The UK newspaper is to press ahead talks to form an unlikely alliance with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp to sell advertising. The plan, now known as project Arena, was a direct response to the alarming decline in print advertising revenues that has been upending the newspaper business. GMG is one year into a three-year reorganisation to slash costs and reduce heavy losses that had at one stage threatened the future of the organisation. But cash outflows in its past financial year were £67.3m — only slightly down from £72.3m in 2015/16. A total of 300 jobs went in a shake-up across the group, while The Guardian is set to go to a tabloid format from the first quarter of next year, a move that will save the business between £5m and £7m a year in 2018/19. Douglas said that to break even by 2019, the business would have to find a “further £45m of savings over the next two years”.

Claire Enders was quoted in an article on Dame Carolyn McCall, who will take charge of ITV next January. Although her appointment was widely welcomed by analysts and media executives, the boss of the no-frills airline will nevertheless need to steer the UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster through some potentially turbulent times. Under former chief executive Adam Crozier, ITV reduced its reliance on the cyclical advertising market by expanding its production division, ITV Studios, to become a major player in the international content business. But advertising still made up 47 per cent of ITV’s revenues of £3bn in 2016, and the problem for Dame Carolyn is that she is taking over just as the ad market heads into its most severe downturn since the financial crisis of 2009. Claire said “TV revenue is heading into the unknown, and there’s no end in sight to the decline of the core TV business”.