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Speaker 1: Right now. Some of the country's most iconic magazines are

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Speaker 1: going up for sale again, five years after they were

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Speaker 1: rescued from cancelation during the pandemic. The Listener, Women's Day,

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Speaker 1: New Zealand Women's Weekly and some other titles were bought

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Speaker 1: by Our Media in twenty twenty after Boo Media abruptly

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Speaker 1: closed them. But now Our Media is on the market,

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Speaker 1: reportedly because it hasn't been making enough of a profit.

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Speaker 1: Duncan Grieve is the host of the Fold the spin

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Speaker 1: Offs media podcast and joins me.

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Speaker 2: Now, Hi, Duncan, Hey, Royn, how are you good?

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Speaker 1: So they're just not making enough money?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think that that's the sort of

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Speaker 2: thesis coming out of Australia. I actually recently interviewed Stuart Dick,

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Speaker 2: our Media's boss here, and he was very upbeat about

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Speaker 2: how the New Zealand assets are performing. And you know

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Speaker 2: that might well be true. It's a much leaner operation here,

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Speaker 2: so you know there might be a difference there. But overall,

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Speaker 2: magazines are a tough business to be in anywhere in

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Speaker 2: the world.

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Speaker 1: Does it matter, well, presumably quite important who buys them

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Speaker 1: and that will determine what happens with the next.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they're being sold by a private equity owner.

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Speaker 2: Typically they want to buy it cheap, strip out costs,

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Speaker 2: get the profit margins up, and sell them for more.

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Speaker 2: They've held it for a relatively long time five years

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Speaker 2: for that kind of a program, and they're not selling

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Speaker 2: it what you would call the optimum time for any

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Speaker 2: media asset. So it makes you think that maybe something

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Speaker 2: has gone a bit awry there. So you know, this

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Speaker 2: talk of maybe they could go to another private actuality buy.

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Speaker 2: But I think, especially if they cut off the New

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Speaker 2: zeal assets, I can see someone like enz me, which

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Speaker 2: does already do the digital subscriptions for the listener, potentially

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Speaker 2: taking a look at them.

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Speaker 1: What is it worth? I mean, is it the fact

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Speaker 1: that they're hard copy magazines that makes it hard to

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Speaker 1: make money out.

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Speaker 2: Of I think that some of it is kind of

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Speaker 2: perception narrative stuff. You know that magazines used to be

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Speaker 2: amazing moneymaking machines, and a lot of premium brands would

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Speaker 2: only advertise in them or put a lot of their

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Speaker 2: spend through them. That kind of stuff has gone to

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Speaker 2: other places now, even though there is still a robust,

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Speaker 2: if aging audience for magazines, but they still have like

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Speaker 2: good sort of subscription revenues and you can make a

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Speaker 2: good business out of them, but they're just not as

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Speaker 2: sexy as they once were.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And like I was thinking today about your women's

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Speaker 1: days and stuff. Nowadays you've got social media and celebrities

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Speaker 1: and you know, actors, and they've all got their own

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Speaker 1: They basically do their own Women's day through their Instagram accounts,

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Speaker 1: don't they.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, the sort of so called lifestyle and women's

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Speaker 2: titles that they have the most impacted in terms of

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Speaker 2: the kind of you know, exactly what you said, that

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Speaker 2: the fact that what they the function that they performed

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Speaker 2: has been somewhat duplicated. There is an older audience's people

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Speaker 2: live a lot longer now, so you know, they still

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Speaker 2: have quite good sales, but they don't have that same

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Speaker 2: sense of being really central to the culture anymore. Whereas

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Speaker 2: a title like The Listener, which is actually a real

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Speaker 2: outlier amongst the rest of the portfolio. You know, I

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Speaker 2: think under Kirsty's editorship, it really has done a very

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Speaker 2: good job of getting back to being a quite psychostic publication.

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Speaker 1: Again, Yeah, Dunk, And I hope that someone picks them

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Speaker 1: up because there's some really talented journalists working at these magazines,

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Speaker 1: and they I just hope that they keep going. Thank

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Speaker 1: and Grief, host of The Fold, the spin OFFFS Media podcast.

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