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Re: [GWL]: British magazines closed

Title: Re: [GWL]: British magazines closed
There are number if factors which have led to these magazine closures. First, it's not a matter of fewer people gardening, sales in garden centres were up significantly last spring and summer, in spite of poor weather. But people now get their gardening information from elsewhere.

Ground Force, a TV garden makeover show, was for some years regularly in the top ten in the ratings - for all shows of any kind on British TV! It's still often in the top twenty (and is regularly re-run in the US on BBC America). While there is no dedicated gardening satellite/cable channel, there's been a great increase in the number of gardening shows on these channels. Almost every local radio station has its own, local gardening show - the equivalent of every NPR station (and many commercial stations) having a gardening show hosted by local experts for its local area. Womens magazines have increased their gardening content over the years, some national and regional newspapers too - including mine.

This has taken away sales from the gardening magazines although this has largely been balanced by new readers coming in... trickling down, if you like, from free-to-air TV which tends to attract new people to gardening. Although now, as people are more reluctant to spend (except in holiday sales, perhaps) they tend to cut out purchase of their second gardening magazine and stick with the best value and the market leaders.

And while there is more gardening content in more places - there are also more options for advertisers. It's more the advertising which has been leaking away from the gardening magazines to other media which has caused the problem and led to magazines hanging in the balance and now, with advertising collapsing generally, they just can't hang on.

General interest magazines are reducing pagination and letting freelances go, newspapers too. Specialist gardening magazines will also be more cautious in their pagination as the season gets under way this spring - they're working on these isues now.

It's going to be tough for freelances this coming year - unless you're on TV every week.

Graham Rice
http://www.grahamrice.com

Graham,
Thanks for the information on UK garden magazines.  Are they having the same
problems as USA magazines--less people gardening?  Or is it the economy?
Doreen Howard

-----Original Message-----
From: Graham Rice <garden@tiscali.co.uk>
To: Gardenwriters@topica.com <Gardenwriters@topica.com>
Date: Monday, December 24, 2001 12:26 PM
Subject: [GWL]: British magazines closed


>A number of people have emailed me privately to ask which are the
>four British gardening magazines which have closed.
>
>They are:
>Your Garden
>Garden Inspirations
>Garden Ideas
>Water Gardening (NB Not Water Gardener)
>
>At least one more is thought to be in danger... hard times.
>
>Graham Rice
>
>Donna: I tried to reply to you off list at donna@icangarden.com with
>his information, but my emails were repeatedly bounced back.
>
>Pass the word to garden writers, editors publishers, horticultural
businesses about our list.
>
>

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>==========================

============================================================
For meals, baking recipes and advice, visit veryBestBaking.com
from Nestle.  Enjoy hundreds of recipes and baking advice from
trusted brands such as Nestle Toll
House, Carnation Milk, and Libby's Pumpkin.
http://click.topica.com/caaaeKnbUrGSSbVSZwBg/Nestle
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