Remember when people used to talk about retiring at 55? I do… Only a few years ago a friend was talking about cashing in something or other at 55 and living an easier life. Sadly, this is not a reality now I approach my 55th birthday.
On Friday I was at a lunch for International Women’s Day organised by Vicky Ryce, a fellow PR who runs her business from the New Forest. It was great to be in a roomful of ambitious and hard-working women, who are making successes of their businesses against the current odds of family commitments/a sluggish economy/the cost of living crisis/and a general global storm of politics, war and climate catastrophe. We deserved that glass of Prosecco.
When I was in Poland a couple of years ago on International Women’s Day, just about every woman we saw was carrying a single tulip that she had presumably been given by a loved one. It struck me as a wonderful tradition and one that we could easily adopt here in the UK, if only we valued women and girls more highly in society. International Women’s Day was never a thing in the UK when I was growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. I’m glad it’s taking hold as a day to celebrate the one half of the global population without whom the other half can’t thrive (and the reverse is also true, of course).
At the end of February, I was in Westminster at Methodist Central Hall for the ChurchWorks Summit, a one-day conference that brought together more than 300 people from local churches around the country, people from the NHS and government policy makers including the ministers for faith and for social security.
It was a fantastic day, ably organised by the ChurchWorks team (which is a Good Faith Partnership project). I met journalists I haven’t worked with before and others from the worlds of faith and government.
Spring has finally sprung, and there are several major projects in the pipeline to take me through the coming summer, including celebrating the 10 years that Good Faith has now been in business.
Meanwhile at Winchester Cathedral and for the Creative Cities Convention I’m pleased to say we’re securing some really valuable positive PR coverage.
In other news
This was interesting from The Guardian – of course – about using cash for one whole week and really thinking about parting with money rather than just tapping and going (while experiencing queues and fewer options for those who still use cash over cards/contactless).
This was also thought-provoking about the few national newspapers who still publish ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation) daily sales figures. Reach has taken its titles out of ABC reporting, meaning that now only the FT, the Mail titles, The Metro and The I are publishing sales data.
When I was editing Broadcast, weekly subscriber numbers were already falling, from 13,000 a week to about 11,000 a week over the three years I edited the paper. I didn’t take it personally; the market was changing around us and we were slow to launch our website (initially called produxion.com which produced many sniggers around the industry and which my great friend and colleague at the time Tabby Cole and I managed to get rebranded as broadcastnow.co.uk because the broadcast.co.uk url had already gone).
Anyway, the eyeballs and advertising market was moving online from print, and initially broadcastnow.co.uk just gave its content away and thought that ad revenue would fill the gap, which it didn’t. I personally thought it was mad not to have paywall. Now, Broadcast is behind a paywall and only publishes a monthly print publication which I never see but which I hope is doing ok, to keep the brand alive.
The whole entity with awards and supplements used to turn over about £5m a year with a healthy profit. I wonder what it is now? It looks like Media Business Insight as a whole – which used to own Broadcast, ALF and the Screen titles – turned over about £14m before it was sold to Global Data in 2022.
Broadcast isn’t quite the industry Bible that it used to be, but other challengers such as Media Guardian have receded and gone are the days when every national newspaper had a media section. The advertising and the money is just not there in the TV industry at the moment.
That’s it for this month. See you in April.
Lucy Rouse PR Blog 