With the end of 2009’s first quarter fast approaching, we’ve heard the words “credit,” “crunch,” and “crisis” ad nauseum. The rumor mill is churning and speculation within the region’s media industry is playing out like a game of Chinese whispers. As ad revenues plummet, Dubai’s magazine publishing industry is in the eye of the hearsay storm.
With gossip ranging from job cuts to pay freezes, publication postponements to restructuring, Communicate spoke to some of Dubai’s best-known publishers about the rumors to give them a chance to set the record straight. (In the interests of objectivity, we elected not to speak to Mediaquest, the publishing house behind this magazine. Besides, talking to yourself is weird.)
Up until the end of 2008, fortune – mostly – favored Dubai’s magazine industry. In October, Motivate relaunched Campaign, and then introduced Golf Digest in November. Prior to that, The Media Factory launched football title FourFourTwo in August. Motivate’s announcement of the launch of Men’s Health was followed by ITP’s launch of Men’s Fitness in December.
By the end of 2008, cracks were showing. The usually reticent management at ITP spoke up at the launch of Men’s Fitness in December. “Growth is slowing dramatically, but there is still growth,” ITP’s managing director Robert Seraphin told The National newspaper.
In the same month, ITP’s Business Publishing division released a statement announcing two of its titles would be closed down. Both Medical Times and Middle East Dentist were discontinued in January 2009. The publisher maintained that the move would “result in no job losses, but allows the company to focus its resources on new projects, launches and market opportunities it feels are appropriate to prevailing market conditions.”
The vitriolic – and often apocryphal – Dubai Media Observer blog reported rumors of a pay freeze at ITP in January, and gossip about the company was mixed; alleged plans to open offices in Abu Dhabi and expand to India seemed at odds with reports of swingeing job cuts. ITP is one of Dubai’s biggest publishing houses and probably the one surrounded by most speculation. The company says the deaths of at least two magazines (a retail title and Boat Owner Middle East) have been greatly exaggerated. “I can confirm that they are still operational,” says an ITP spokeswoman.
“ITP continues to maintain a strong, vibrant regional publishing, events and Internet business in the Middle East and Indian markets,” says a statement from the company. “Today’s market reflects a number of changed priorities and market conditions that bring new challenges but also, ultimately, new opportunities. The company is refining its operations to ensure that it continues to meet market needs and provide value to the organizations and people it serves, and remains committed to providing media that lead the way.”
By the end of last year, Motivate Publishing had announced that it was suspending Society Dubai, and at the beginning of this year, they announced they would be postponing the launch of Men’s Health, which was due to hit news stands in February. Motivate’s managing partner Ian Fairservice says that 2009 will clearly be a year of negative growth in the publishing sector, compared to what he describes as a “sensational” year in 2008. “In spite of early signals in September and October, we still went ahead with the launch of Golf Digest and Campaign, both of which are doing well,” Fairservice tells Communicate.
“We remain excited about launching Men’s Health, but considered that a February launch would not have done justice to the brand,” he continues. “We felt that to go ahead with the launch would have been irresponsible, and our partners at Rodale [from whom the title is licensed] agree that a launch later in the year is a far better prospect. Men’s Health was not our only launch planned for 2009, and we have other new projects – as yet unannounced – which will also still go ahead this year.”
Fairservice adds that in January Motivate introduced a new management structure, including two new group publisher posts. “As a result of this, there have been a small number of job losses since the beginning of the year, but only three redundancies,” he says. “The remaining team members have been found alternative positions.”
The year kicked off badly for football title FourFourTwo, which only came into play in the summer. Its publisher, The Media Factory (TMF), announced in a statement that the magazine would be suspended until the end of the year. “Recently, The Media Factory responded swiftly to a dramatically shifting marketplace,” Chris Shaw, director of TMF, tells Communicate. “This action involved suspending our football title, FourFourTwo, and cutting back on some central costs, which regrettably included letting a small number of staff go. The exercise was designed to reduce costs and in turn minimize future risk to our company and our existing portfolio. That said, the remaining portfolio is continuing to perform and, like all businesses at the moment, we are monitoring each area of our business very closely.”
Shaw goes on to say that TMF is committed to “a couple of high-profile launches in 2009, which of course means that we will soon be recruiting again.”
Not everyone is tightening their belts. Saudi-based publishing house Saudi Research and Publishing Company (SRPC) – the company behind Asharq Alawsat and Arab News, and Sayidati magazine among others – says it is even hiring in some divisions. “We never over-recruited in the past, so we didn’t have much employment ‘fat’ to start with,” says Ahmed Al Sudace, assistant managing director of SRPC. “We are freezing recruitment in some areas, but we are recruiting in sales and customer services. We see 2009 as an opportunity to get the best out of our people.”
Al Sudace adds that the 40-year-old publishing house might have missed some opportunities in the past due to a “careful” approach, but their cautious strategy is now paying off. “Our specialized company [Saudi Specialized Publishing Company] launched two titles recently: Domus, which is specialized in modern architecture, interior design, design and art; and Madame Figaro, a French women’s magazine published in Arabic. The market still needs quality, innovative mediums, and we are going to supply that. I think 2009 will witness the vanishing of many obscure titles simply because they lack the backbone to support themselves during hard times.”
One publisher that might feel its sole periodical falls into that category is Brownbook Publishing. A relative newcomer to the magazine publishing industry, it has been putting out brownbook magazine every two months for the past two years. The eclectic, artsy lifestyle title seems to be weathering the storm, says editorial director Zaina Adhami. As an independent publisher, she says, Brownbook hasn’t felt the wrath of the crisis. “It still hasn’t affected us. We have set very good relationships with the advertising market. Du and Nakheel are helping us to develop more and more.” Although real estate companies are slashing their advertising spend, she doesn’t seem too anxious about losing Nakheel.
While she admits that the crisis is “a bit scary,” Adhami says that Brownbook Publishing plans to expand in 2009. “We want to develop Middle Eastern city guides. We’ll have awards, and we will try to introduce publishing books. The crisis hasn’t halted or postponed our plans; everything is fine.” Brownbook still prints 10,000 copies, she says, for circulation mainly in the UAE, but also in Beirut, Damascus, Istanbul, New York and European cities.
Industry veterans maintain that 2009 will be difficult for magazine publishing. Motivate’s Fairservice says, “It is going to be a tough year for media, but as we embark on our 30th anniversary year, we remain optimistic that properly established, reliable and, essentially, audited magazines will continue to do well.”
Shaw says TMF is no different from other publishers in the region in the issues it will face in 2009 – namely budgetary ones. He believes the crisis could give a healthy shake-up to the industry. “There are far too many poor magazines published in the region, and current market conditions will expose the weaker titles,” says Shaw. “This paves the way for existing advertising budgets to be spread over fewer vehicles, which is good news for those that are still in business.”