The publisher, which sells more than 74m magazines a year, announced the changes to staff yesterday (5 October).
Top of the Pops magazine is closing and across the business 58 positions are at risk of redundancy with 52 jobs expected to go.
Immediate employs 804 people in total across its London and Bristol sites.
In a missive to employees executive chairman Tom Bureau said that the business was anticipating a difficult economic climate over the next 12–24 months, and had decided “to act now to put the business in the best possible position to weather the storm”.
While the Covid-impacted 2020 trading year had been challenging, the impact was relatively short-lived with many of Immediate’s brands enjoying a “Covid bounce”.
Last year the firm’s subscriber base passed the 1m landmark after readers turned to its trusted and special interest magazine brands during the pandemic.
However, trading conditions have worsened this year with many financial and business commentators predicting a recession in Q4 2022 and into 2023.
“Although we had predicted a downturn in 2022, as the world returned to normal behaviour, in the last few months we’ve been seeing a steep decline, with a significant increase in costs, and alongside that less consumer demand for our products on the newsstand, higher churn from subscriptions, and slower growth in our digital business,” Bureau stated.
He cited “huge inflationary pressures” on Immediate’s cost base across its supply chain, “particularly in our print, paper, and distribution costs”.
“These add up to more than £9m of additional direct costs across the business, including a 34% year over year increase in paper costs and 25% in printing costs.”
Cost saving measures have included changes to paper, printing, and production as well as reducing discretionary budgets.
Bureau said that alongside the fall in consumer confidence, business conditions had got much harder than at the last company-wide briefing over the summer.
He noted: “Where we are proposing redundancies, they are in no way a reflection on the talented people and teams affected. We appreciate the hard work, expertise, and significant contributions our people make.”
Top of the Pops magazine is billed as the UK’s biggest selling teen title. The monthly has an ABC circulation of 36,485 and is one of the BBC titles published under licence by Immediate.
As well as the magazine closure and headcount reduction, Immediate is also pausing all non-essential recruitment, removing any open vacancies where possible, and reviewing production and freelance costs.
Immediate Media was acquired by German media group Hubert Burda in January 2017.
Its flagship brand is the venerable Radio Times, the UK’s most profitable magazine brand with more 272,988 subscribers and overall paid circulation of 480,938 according to its more recent ABC certificate for July to December 2021.
Immediate’s main print suppliers are Walstead Group and William Gibbons.
There is industry expectation that other large consumer publishers will also be conducting similar reviews in light of the increases in production costs and likely impact of the cost of living crisis on consumer spending.
One publishing industry source commented: “You can imagine that all the big publishers will be looking at their titles from the bottom up, and I’m sure changes will be on the way whether deliberate or forced, such as the paper changes that had to be made because of the UPM strike.
“Magazine subscriptions went up in lockdown, and now they’re going down because people are either not renewing or cancelling due to the cost of living crisis. Most big household name publishers haven’t reacted yet, maybe they will follow Immediate’s lead.”
