Magazines
The
National Geographic Image Collection, owned by The Walt Disney Company, is scheduled to close effective December 22, 2020. National Geographic
was sold to Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox for $725 million in 2015. In March 2019 Fox was sold to Disney and Murdoch and his family became the second largest shareholders.
Many brands are finding that their Internet marketing is not working as well as it did a year or so ago. The brands pay Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other web hosting services huge amounts of money to target potential customers with pop-up ads that often don’t seem to generate much in additional sales. Brands like Airbnb, Away, Bumble, Callaway Golf, REI Co-op and Goose Island Beer Co. are developing custom, specialized magazines that focus on what their brand has to offer. If this trend grows it may offer new work for assignment photographers with specialized connections or skills.
Aller Media a leading publisher of celebrity, human touch and women’s magazines in Denmark, has announced it has partnered with
The Mega Agency, who will become a preferred content partner. The deal, signed earlier this month, gives Aller Media access to The Mega Agency's breaking news content and rich archive of news, sport and entertainment photographs and videos, and further enhances the close relationship between the two media companies.
Time Inc. unveiled plans for a “strategic transformation” that will yield more than $400 million in savings over the next few years. In the last quarterly earnings report total revenues fell 10% year to year while operating income fell from $50 million to a loss of $38 million.
The Mega Agency launched its newly-signed syndication deal with American Media Inc. (AMI), one of America’s biggest publishers, with world-wide coverage of the first wedding of Prince Harry’s new girlfriend Meghan Markle.
According to a document filed with Companies House in the U.K. (see
here) it appears that Rex Features Limited (owned by Shutterstock) lent
Silverhub Media the money necessary to purchase
Splash. In return Rex Features has received very extensive control over the activities of Silverhub with regard to certain unspecified assets.
Recently, a European asked me how the editorial market for photography has changed in the U.S. the last 10 years. First, gross revenue for U.S. newspapers has declined about 60% from $49.3 billion in 2006 to $19.9 billion in 2014. As revenue has declined the space for editorial content, including pictures, has declined.
The New York Times reports that the National Geographic Society have been sold to Rupert Murdoch’s
21st Century Fox for $725 million.
There are widespread rumors that, in an effort to get out from under some of its crushing debt,
Getty hopes to sell its Editorial Division early in 2015. It has been reported that Q3 2014 sales for this segment of their business was about $65 million up 21% year-on-year. Editorial represents about 30% of the company’s gross revenue.
TT News Agency, NTB, Scanpix Denmark and Scanpix Baltics have announced the formation of the
Scandinavian Photo Alliance. The core of the new alliance is the former Scanpix group. The SPA expects to work on pan-Scandinavian initiatives spanning both editorial and commercial areas.
Time Warner will spin-off Time Inc. on May 23, 2014. Shareholders of record at 5:00 p.m. on that date will receive one share of Time Inc. common stock for every eight shares of Time Warner common stock. For more details about the new company check out the SEC's
Preliminary Information Statement of Time, Inc.
In 2013 there were 145,713 ad pages in the magazines measured by the trade organization
Publishers Information Bureau. It is worth noting that in 2000 this organization reported 286,932 ad pages – almost double the 2013 numbers -- for the magazines it tracks.
The MAGNA GLOBAL Advertising Forecast released early this year reported that the Global advertising spend in 2012 was $495 billion up 3.8% from $479.9 in 2011. But, in 2013 newspaper and magazine ad revenues are expected to fall. The U.S. was the largest market with $153 billion in revenues in 2012. Japan, China, Germany and the UK complete the top five.
Scoopshot, the global crowdsourcing photo and video service has announced a global alliance with
Ebyline, a company which helps media publishers, agencies and brands to collaborate with professional freelance journalists worldwide by providing workflow tools.
Eric Charbonneau, a renowned entertainment photographer with over 25 years of experience, today signed with
Invision, the multimedia entertainment agency jointly owned by
The Associated Press and some of the world's leading entertainment photographers.
Scoopshot has launched Scoopshot PRO that makes commissioning a photographer easier than ever. The service gives the media, ad agencies and other companies access to a global pool of professional and accredited amateur photographers, and the ability to set, manage and pay for assignments.
This article provides trend information on the global and U.S. revenue generated through advertising by newspapers, magazines and online delivery services. Advertising revenue has always been key in supporting the creation and distribution of information content. Historically U.S. publishers have relied on 85 percent of their revenue coming from advertising.
Last month we wrote about
Scoopshot a site where any photographer can submit cell phone pictures for editorial use. The company has been in business for about 18 months and has over 130,000 contributors from 165 different countries. Now Scoopshot has added an option that allows editors to identify and give assignments to a select group of photographers that produce professional quality work.
Publishers are asking for free pictures more frequently. Usually they
argue that the recognition a photographer receives from having his or
her pictures appear in their publication is all the compensation the
photographer should expect. Often they don’t even publish a byline.Thus
readers have no way of knowing who took the picture.
To infinity, and beyond! Roger Ressmeyer is one of 20 candidates with the chance to win a sub-orbital space flight. All he needs is lots of votes from people like you. Roger has been passionate about going to space all is life. And wouldn’t it be great to have a professional photographer actually fly in space. With your Facebook votes you can help him fly! Vote here (
http://apps.facebook.com/spaceracecompetition/entries/147)
Corbis Images has launched
OnDemand: Entertainment, a flexible entertainment subscription service. The entertainment subscriptions provide customers with exclusive access to the industry’s most comprehensive collection of breaking entertainment and iconic celebrity imagery. The service will be available to customers worldwide searching for compelling creative content to showcase their celebrity and entertainment related news.
According to an eMarketer study in 2012 U.S. marketers are expected to
spend more on online advertising than on newspaper and magazine ads
combined. Marketers are expected to spend $39.5 billion this year compared to $33.8 billion on print.
Some argue that there will always be plenty of print publications and
demand for images to be used in print. This story provides some statistics on the Magazine industry, Printing Industry, Newspapers and the Internet that provide a depressing picture of where the demand for still photography is headed.
According to
eMarketer world advertising spend is expected to be about $500 billion this year. The online portion of this spend will make up about $80.2 billion, or 16.1% of the total. By 2015 online advertising spend is expected to reach $132.1 billion and be 22% of total advertising spend.
AudioMicro, Inc., which operates a network of digital content licensing marketplaces, has announced that
ImageCollect.com, its celebrity picture marketplace launched just five months ago has more than 1,500,000 mostly “red carpet” images available for download. The company expects to have more than 4 million images on its site before the end of the year. The collection includes archival imagery from companies like Globe Photos and current content being supplied by top entertainment photographers.