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H Bauer and Emap – a match made in heaven or hell?

Posted in Media, Nikki Preston, Latest reporters' blogs December 7th, 2007 by Nikki Preston

Speculation is rife now about what is going to happen to well-known brands Grazia and Magic after a relatively low-end publisher of traditional magazines has put its hands in its pocket and coughed up a rather spectacular £1.14 billion for Emap’s consumer magazine and radio business.

After a string of disastrous attempts to expand via new launches - remember the short lived title In the Know - perhaps Bauer has decided the only way to expand by acquisition. And instead of going back to the drawing board and launching a new title it has overnight gone from being a mid-size magazine publisher to being able to take on publishing giant IPC Media.

In the middle of 2007 the publisher was obviously eager to enter the celebrity market as it relaunched Bella as a celebrity-focused title. However, it’s circulation fell to 25.4 per cent year-on-year to 247,390 after it failed to tell its readers that it was repositioning the title.

The Emap titles certainly add more glamorous and interesting content to Bauer’s traditional line of titles, but with a history of doing little marketing only time will tell whether it is capable of leading successful marketing campaigns not it has some popular titles under its belt. And further more what will it do with Emap’s lost causes like First and NW?

But maybe H Bauer has an ulterior motive, as with limited experience in radio (yes it apparently has a share of a radio station in Hamburg and also a radio station in Poland) does it actually plan to expand into the radio market? Or was it instead just a sure fire way of securing the consumer magazine business? Perhaps Global, who was the higher bidder for the radio business, hasn’t missed out after all…

To read the news story related to this blog, go to mad.co.uk