Media watch

JUST SO THAT YOU KNOW

There's been some interesting moves in the media world this week:

Telegraph Media Group
Tim Woodward has been appointed Executive Editor, News for The Daily Telegraph. Tim will be responsible for overseeing the integration of news from the early morning. Tim was previously Assistant Editor, News for The Sunday Telegraph.

The Guardian
Damian Carrington has started this week as Environment Website Editor for The Guardian. Damian was previously Interactive Editor at the Financial Times.

heat
Mark Frith leaves heat magazine tomorrow. Julian Linley is temporarily in charge at heat from Monday. 

Telegraph Media Group
Telegraph Media Group have been busy this week and just announced the appointment of a newly formed integrated Religious Affairs team. George Pitcher has been appointed Religion Editor writing for The Daily Telegraph as well as The Sunday Telegraph and Telegraph.co.uk. He will be working with Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, and Jonathan Wynne-Jones, Religious Affairs Correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph. Additionally, Damian Thompson will continue with his blog ‘Holy Smoke’ as well as contributing regularly to the newspaper and website comment pages.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS

A few movers and shakers have caught our eye this week:

Eve
From the June issue, eve magazine will be unveiling a new look which will include more fashion and shopping pages and a new logo, and for the first time the magazine will appear in a new, taller 'runway' style. Nic McCarthy remains the Editor.

Grazia
Maria Casey has recently become Health Editor of Grazia

Stuff/ Stuff Nano
Stuff magazine is to launch a travel-sized edition with its June issue, dubbed the ‘Nano’ edition. Both the Nano and normal-sized editions will be published on the same day and will feature the same content, although the Nano edition will initially only be available in selected outlets. The June issue is out on May 1st.

Daily Mail
Our friend Matt Warren has been promoted from Travel & Property Editor to Commissioning Features Editor for the Daily Mail

IT'S ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS....

Here at Seventy Seven, we are loving Fabulous, the News of the World's new magazine, which is fast living up to its claim to be 'Britain's Biggest Weekly Glossy'.

It only launched two weeks ago, but has already found a firm following amongst the girls in the office - the features/lifestyle and travel sections are proving very handy indeed for feature pitching!

Fabulous replaces the paper's Sunday magazine and TV Mag, and has been compared to Emap's Closer and Grazia. It is edited by Mandy Appleyard and Jane Johnson, News of the World deputy editor.

Roland Agambar, the News Group Newspapers sales and marketing director said:

"The launch of Fabulous magazine is going to make the News of the World package a must-have for every household in Britain,"

"With the best scoops, the best sports coverage and now the best women's magazine - it is the complete Sunday newspaper package.

"We won't bribe our readers with unwanted DVD's - we listened to our customers, they wanted this product and we have delivered."

Only time will tell if this continues to deliver -if it is going to compare to Grazia, it is going to have to stand the test of time.

IPC FLOGS PRACTICAL PARENTING

As reported by Stephen Brooks, IPC has sold off its leading parenting title, Practical Parenting, claiming that it is no longer a "strategic fit".

That just about wraps up the market to Magicalia, PP's new owners.

The publisher, which was founded in 1999, has recently bought Junior, Junior Pregnancy & Baby and Pregnancy, Baby & You. If it were an interesting enough market, the OFT would get involved on the basis of monopoly, or something.

ALL CHANGE AT THE OBSERVER

Hot off the press regarding one of our favourite Sunday papers - The new Observer editor John Mulholland, has made a raft of changes in his first week in the job.

Mulholland, the Observer's deputy editor for nine years before he replaced outgoing editor Roger Alton this week, has also appointed Chris Boffey as the paper's news editor.

Another major move was to drop columnist Jasper Gerard whom Alton hired in November 2006 from the Sunday Times where he was a diarist and chief interviewer.

Nicola Jeal, the editor of Observer Food Monthly and Observer Woman, has been promoted to the new post of head of Observer magazines. A double British Society of Magazine Editors award winner, Jeal will continue to edit the two titles while also overseeing the Observer Magazine and taking on an advisory role for Observer Sport Monthly and Observer Music Monthly.

Other significant changes include: Paul Webster, who has been confirmed as sole deputy editor in charge of home, foreign and business news and comment. Assistant editor, Robert Yates, will take on extra duties to help oversee the Review and Escape sections, while also assisting Mulholland in an advisory role with OSM and OMM.

Former Guardian columnist Catherine Bennett will write a column in the news section from January 13 and Barbara Ellen will begin a new column in the main paper from the same date. Alice Fisher, the commissioning editor for Observer Magazine, becomes style corrrespondent and will work for the news section, as well as the magazine. Observer Cash's deputy personal finance editor, Lisa Bachelor, becomes consumer affairs correspondent, writing for the news section. Bachelor will also continue to work for the Cash section.

KEEPING YOU "IN THE KNOW"

A few moves caught our eye this week:

Tatler: Ticky Hedley-Dent has replaced Kate Bernard as the new Features Editor for Tatler.

Eve: Nic McCarthy has been appointed Editor of Eve, and will take up the role from January 2008. Nic, a previous Editor of OK, will replace Sara Cremer who will take up the role of Editorial Director at Redwood Publishing.

Food and Travel: Charlotte Swift, who is currently freelance, starts as Editor of Food and Travel on Monday 17th December replacing Claire Shiells.

Cosmopolitan.co.uk: Is now based at Hearst Digital, 5th Floor, 7 Swallow Place, London, W1B 2AG

ElectricPig.tv: James Holland is to be the Editor of the new gadget and technology website, due to officially launch in the New Year. James moves over from T3.co.uk where he was Deputy Editor.

CUSTOMISE YOUR BBC

The BBC has just unveiled plans for a revamped website promising users a greater level of customisation as well as a raft of new features.

The new site lets users customise the range and detail of content on the homepage, and is made up of moveable widgets that allow users to determine the layout of the page. Users can also receive feeds from blogs produced across the BBC as well as being able to localise news and weather feeds.

For the first time users are also able to listen live to BBC Radio directly from the homepage and to browse the evening's BBC TV schedules. If you can't bear the anticipation, you can test a beta version of the new homepage by visiting www.bbc.co.uk and clicking on the link....

MY MONTH IN MEDIA: JAMES GORDON-MACINTOSH

What I’ve read

A bit of everything for me - The Guardian and The Observer are weekday bus-ride in and coffee and croissant at the weekend fodder of choice.  The Observer’s monthly mags – the Food, Sport, Woman and Music Monthlies – are some of the best things to have happened in publishing for years, in my view.

Other than those, a read through one of the tabs is obligatory on a daily basis – to find out who’s writing what about who.  The Daily Mail and Daily Express I still struggle to enjoy reading – although the former is stunning journalism and a paper that understands (and to a degree, shapes) its audience like no other.

Magazine-wise, Wallpaper, Creative Review, Monocle and Esquire are my magazines of choice and the ones that I choose to spend money on.  For work, Campaign, Marketing Week and The Grocer are must-reads.

What I’ve watched

Stephen Poliakoff’s run on the Beeb has been the appointment-to-view stuff of the week.  Stunning story writing, beautifully filmed with amazing colour.  Snobby, undoubtedly, but amazing TV and what the BBC was invented for.

Other than that it is same old, same old.  Channel 4 News, BBC News 24 and Newsnight for news.  Top Gear, Ugly Betty, QI, Heroes for relaxation.

I’ve also been struggling to come to terms with 4OD – the download service from Channel 4.  Plan is to work through the whole of Shameless, then the IT Crowd and a spot of Spaced.  The whole idea of on-demand TV is fantastic.  It’s the practice that I’m struggling with.

What I’ve listened to

I seem to have grown up and graduated to Radio 4.  The Today programme still sets the agenda for a lot of the day – but has become lighter over the past few years.  Other than that, the classic magazine programming just works – from Woman’s Hour to You & Yours and all the way through to PM and the World Tonight.  Some of the finest broadcasting happens on R4 – from Saturday Live (a decent successor to John Peel’s Home Truths) to From Our Own Correspondent and Front Row.

Music-wise, I tend to listen to an iPod these days. Breakfast in the office is accompanied by a real mixture – Radio 1, Virgin, XFM, Capital, Heart.  The only thing I couldn’t cope with was Magic.  Afternoons appear to have become Chris Evans’ (a legendary broadcaster and a media maverick if ever there was one) home ground and he has re-invented himself wonderfully.

Where I’ve surfed

Online, a daily check of BBC News Online, GuardianUnlimited, Daily Telegraph TV.  Netvibes has revolutionised my life and has made it possible to peruse headlines across hundreds of pages all at once.

YouTube has kept me busy of late – enjoying the antics of a certain Cadbury’s Gorilla and the Wonderbra pastiche that followed.  Bebo’s Kate Modern has been fun to watch and observe.

Bloggers are also starting to take up more of my time – Russell Davies, Richard Huntington, Faris Yakob are all writing thoughtfully and intelligently about the media-saturated world that we live in.

UPDATE: for past editions and other Seventy Seven folks' picks, see here.

A ROUGH GUIDE TO TRAVEL ON FIVE

As dedicated readers of 'the travellers bible', we were excited to hear that next year Channel Five is to air a new eight part series of travel shows based on the Rough Guide books. Each episode of 'The Rough Guide to ..' will be 30 minutes long.

Every week the programme will explore the top five destinations in a number of holiday categories - such as most responsible holiday destinations. Presenters of the 10-part series have yet to be revealed.

The series will be made by independent production company Lion Television, and is one of the first commissions to be given the green light by the new Five director of programmes, Jay Hunt.

OCTOBER SEES TABLOID CIRCULATIONS SLUMP

The Daily Mirror circulation has dropped to an all time low of 1,525,477, making the tabloid the worse sufferer of a circulation slump that has affected nearly all the daily newspaper titles, according to Brand Republic, which today announced the newspaper ABC's for October. Key findings were:

TABLOIDS

• The Daily Mirror hit a new low today as circulation dropped 3.74% from the month before and is now close to dropping below the 1.5m level
• The Daily Star was worst hit, dropping 4.05% to 771,197 copies during October

BROADSHEETS

• The Times fell 1.77% in October to 642,895
• The Daily Telegraph fell just 0.96% to 882,413
• The Guardian, which had a two-week giveaway of a series of posters on architecture entitled 'Great Modern Buildings', fell just 0.83% to 364,513 copies
• Pearson's Financial Times was the only quality daily to post a month-on-month rise, up 1.85% to 449,385 copies, and is also the only newspaper in the entire daily market with a positive year-on-year rise, up 1.47% to 440,335

MID MARKET

• Daily Express fell 3.07% on September to 789,867 copies
• The Daily Mail suffered a slight decline in circulation, dropping 0.49% to 2,353,807 copies