Top dogs at most of the UK's national and regional newspaper groups have received copies of a report by one Roger Eastoe regarding the viability of the newspaper industry's weekly trade mag Press Gazette. As previously reported, current owner Matthew Freud has put the title into receivership, and the main proposal to safeguard its future is to transfer ownership to a trust to be founded, coordinated and initially funded by representatives of the main newspaper companies.
According to the Media Guardian (which isn't entirely unbiased when it comes to media for the media, it being one itself), the report is "full of astonishing details that reveal extravagant financial stewardship by the previous owners, Matthew Freud and Piers Morgan". The Guardian's Roy Greenslade says that operating costs "ballooned" after Freud and Morgan's takeover, yet no money was made available for subscription marketing, meaning the number of subscribers fell from 3433 to 2776, despite a general opinion across the media industry that the title improved editorially.
The report concludes that there is a case for the newspaper groups to takeover the ownership and funding of the magazine, pointing out ad revenues have started to increase of late. But Greenslade questions whether the newspaper groups will be willing to take on a title which has been losing £14,000 an issue of late - especially as Eastoe admits that the title can still be expected to be losing £3000 an issue by 2007, even if cutbacks and a new sales push prove successful. A decision is probably needed in the next week or so, and in his analysis, and despite Eastoe's overriding optimism, Greenslade doesn't seem to think the chances of the newspaper groups agreeing on a workable solution on that timescale are all that high.