Unmade: media and marketing analysis
Unmade: media and marketing analysis
Media Unmade - Chapter 14: Magazines are different
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Media Unmade - Chapter 14: Magazines are different

In which German publisher Bauer Media buys Australia's biggest magazine company ACP, only for readers, advertisers and CEOs to desert in droves

Welcome to the latest edition of the Unmade podcast. Today’s edition features another extract from the audio edition of my book, Media Unmade, which is published by Hardie Grant and available online and in book stores.

In today’s episode we examine a story of mismanagement, structural change and bad luck. In the space of a decade, Australia went from having the greatest number of magazine readers per capita to one of the most challenged markets in the English speaking world. But it didn’t need to be that way.

The Packer family’s once great ACP fell in to the hands of the Europe-based Bauer Media. What followed was a conveyor belt of CEOs, magazine closures and advertising exodus.

By the time this picture was taken in 2014 mags were losing their place in Aussie culture | Getty Images

Not that things were much better in the rest of the market where Seven West Media’s Pacific Magazines and News Corp’s News Life Media had their own challenges, leaving the medium unable to collectively market itself to the media agency world.


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Time to let you go about your Friday. Have a great day.

Toodlepip…

Tim Burrowes

Proprietor - Unmade

Unmade: media and marketing analysis
Unmade: media and marketing analysis
Media and marketing news with all the in-depth analysis, insight and context you need.
Unmade offers industry news from an Australian perspective, from the founder of Mumbrella and the author of the best-selling book Media Unmade, Tim Burrowes