Bauer CEO Brendon Hill insists there are ‘absolutely’ plans to reinstate its eight suspended titles
There are ‘absolutely’ plans to reinstate the eight magazines which have been suspended since the merger between Bauer Media and Pacific Magazines according to CEO Brendon Hill. The hold on the titles is entirely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he insisted to staff last week, not the impacts of the merge.
Hill also said he had ‘no idea’ why the brands inside the publisher would change as they were ‘currently working wonderfully’. Since the merger took place a week ago almost 250 staff have been made redundant or stood down from the German-owned magazine business.
Hill says the eight titles that have been suspended will return to operations, ideally in time for on-sale September
“Currently working wonderfully,” Brendon?
Please, try telling that to the remaining staff who are now working unbelievable hours to compensate for having already lean teams slashed beyond the bone. All the while these staff are mourning the loss of many of their colleagues and wondering how much longer things will be operable while Bauer continues single-handedly demolishing many of Australia’s beloved magazines.
As for Bauer’s hubbing strategy? We’ve seen content hubbing trialled overseas and it DOES NOT WORK for premium titles. You cannot produce premium content on less than a shoestring of a budget.
The way things are going, when the economy does recover, all advertisers will be taking their money elsewhere because the magazines won’t be what they used to be. In the case of “stood-down” titles like InStyle, how do you expect to bring these back? The entire team has been made redundant. All existing relationships between the magazine and advertisers are now non-existent and no one knows how to run the title is left.
Please Bauer, the best thing you can do now is sell these magazines to a company that actually cares about magazines so they can continue running. Australians love these magazines and they’ve been mainstays on the media landscape for many years. It’s disgusting they’re being run into the ground like this.
“a new stronger company”???
This is just insulting, patronising and beyond out of touch. No one is buying that sort of rubbish, you idiot.