Memorandum submitted by Seven Publishing
Ltd
In January 2003 discussions began between Seven
Publishing, a start up publishing company based in the UK, and
FPC, the publishers of delicious. Magazine in Australia, with
a view to publishing a UK edition of delicious. Magazine.
These talks progressed until June 2003 during
which time BBC Magazines also became involved in discussions with
FPC with a view to securing the license to publish delicious.
in the UK.
FPC invited both companies to pitch for the
license and as a result of their respective pitches awarded the
license to Seven Publishing. On learning that they had lost the
pitch BBC Magazines developed their proposed version of delicious.
into Olive magazine and launched against the UK edition of delicious.
going on sale with its first issue at the same time with the same
editorial proposition into the same market sector.
At the time of launch Olive did not support
any BBC programming either in brand or content, and did not carry
the BBC logo for the first two years.
At the time of launch there was only one monthly
consumer magazine dedicated to food in the market, BBC Good Food,
not nine as stated by the BBC (a niche magazine launched in 1994,
Food and Travel, was published nine times a year).
Today the market has grown to eight (see below),
not 22 as stated by the BBC—although three of these are
published by BBC Magazines.
The effect of this flooding of the market sector
has been to increase the investment necessary for other publishers
to enter the market. At the time of launching delicious. (November
2003) Seven Publishing was an independent publisher backed by
venture capital. The additional cost of meeting the challenge
posed by BBC Magazines was partly born through an investment by
the Guardian Media Group in March 2004 who took shares in the
new company.
It is worth noting that the audited circulation
of BBC Good Food magazine has grown by 12% since 2004 demonstrating
that delicious. posed no threat to this magazine but has broadened
the market, and that Olive was launched simply as a spoiler
to this launch.
MONTHLY CONSUMER FOOD TITLES
| Title | Publisher
| Circulation
(Jan—June) |
| 2003 BBC Good Food | BBC Magazines
| 324,473 |
2008 BBC Good Food | BBC Magazines
| 340,057 |
| Olive | BBC Magazines | 85,196
|
| Easy Cook | BBC Magazines |
81,484 |
| delicious. | Seven Publishing
| 103,041 |
| Fresh | Trojan Publishing |
22,039 |
| Easy Food | Zahra Publishing
| 30,471 |
| Food & Travel | Green Pea Publishing
| n/a |
| Food & Wine | Harmonia Ltd
| 8,672 |
December 2008
|
| |
| 
