Media Week closes - no classified advertising

17 November 2009


h2. Media magazines have terminal problems

Media Week was launched around 1984/5: ‘media’ had separated to become a huge budget area for companies – and advertising agencies were dividing to specialise.

Tim Brooks, Media Week’s editor, and the publishers were ahead of their time, but unlike their close rivals Marketing Week, had overlooked and misunderstood an important revenue source: classified advertising.

Which publishers and editors often do.

The original idea for Media Week was being touted around to prospective investors around 1981. The idea was to achieve a broad advertising base to take on The Guardian. The Guardian in the 80s was taking the Mickey by carrying ten or more pages of media vacancies supported by just one page of editorial. (These days, most newspapers write lots about the media but don’t carry much advertising).

Media Week has always struggled, like the Press Gazette. Media Week became just a body, passed from one company to another, motivation to motivation, make-over to make-over. It has never been able to exist alone, never earned its own pay packet, always relying on others for support. Why? It’s a great idea, looks good too. But if we hark back to its parents we find neither Media Week (nor Press Gazette) were ever able to take their rightful place in the world.

Media Week failed because the young turks who originated the concept and touted the idea to prospective investors back in 1980 had inserted a ‘poison pill’ in their launch plans in case the idea was ‘borrowed’ and launched without them by a prospective investor. Which it was. Publishing isn’t a pretty business.

Ripped from its natural parents, Media Week became a foster child. And like Press Gazette, isolated from proper medical (marketing) attention.

And so it struggled, never to reach maturity and died as a child …