Business Media Blog

The Business is not a Newspaper

Paul Woolfenden, one time senior honcho on the Express titles, has spent the last few years bravely trying to battle against the inevitable. Working for Andrew Neil, he has been trying to heave The Business in to viable trading. You'll remember it as the Sunday Business. It briefly sold moderatley well, certainly in the tens of thousands, but now relies on free bulks for all but a tiny part of its circulation.

Who needs The Business when the biz sections of the nationals are so comprehensive, when the net offers such choice and immediacy. I suspect the answer is no one.

The latest wheeze, I am told, is to convert the paper into a magazine. This strategy at least has the merit of being different from the current one, but otherwise I can't see how it is expected to work. Sales of general business magazines are universally dreadful in the UK. The American edition of Business Week sells poorly here, the Economist sells ten times as many copies abroad as here, where, even with its wide brief, large budgets and editiorial pedigree it manages to grub less than 40000 UK newstrade copies a week. In the middle of the net boom, even the zeitgeist mags about the internet economy barely sold a copy in the UK.

There will always be somebody with flare and vision who can break the mould, but if Wollfenden pulls this off I'll buy him the Express as a birthday present.

posted by Businessmediablogger @ 1:34 pm