Cape Town is hands-down the magazine publishing capital of South Africa. Johannesburg doesn’t come close. Sectors as diverse as motoring, sports, agriculture, dining, women’s interest, general interest, wine and travel are dominated by titles put together under the ubiquitous mountain. In this place, if you’re walking mid-week around the prime real estate from the city centre to Greenpoint and don’t smack into someone on a deadline, you’re asleep on your feet.
Here’s the quick tour. Big daddy Media24, which controls more than 60% of the country’s total magazine circulation, leers out from its perch at 40 Heerengracht Street over the city bowl and beyond, where competitor-slaying affiliates Touchline Media and New Media Publishing sit. From the latter’s trendoid Prestwich Street address it’ll take about five minutes (in traffic) to get to the headquarters of Associated Magazines, the Raphaely family’s homage to international quality in the women’s niche. Back in the car for another two minutes and you’re at Conde Nast Independent Magazines, the merger of global giants that brings us the local versions of GQ, Glamour and Conde Nast House & Garden. Virtually within walking distance there’s another Media24 affiliate, 8 Ink Media, publishers of the South African edition of global teen girls title Seventeen. Head out onto the highway and in around 20 minutes you’re in Pinelands, home of Ramsay, Son and Parker, arguably South Africa’s most scrupulous publishing group (fact: the research preceding the launch of leading travel title Getaway went on for eight years).
Then there’s the pure-play custom publishing houses (Touchline Media and New Media, noted for their consumer titles, also compete in the custom space). In or around the city centre you’ll find The Publishing Partnership, Picasso Headline and Highbury Monarch Communications, and out in Mowbray you’ll find New Highway Publishing. Between them these four groups produce titles with huge print runs for corporate clients like Edgars, Clicks, Southern Sun, Sun International, American Express, Foschini, Lewis, Jet, Pam Golding Properties and Proctor & Gamble.
So what is it about Cape Town that makes it the hub of magazine publishing in the country? The domestic airlines must be lapping it up, eternally ferrying the executives, editors and salespeople up to Gauteng; where the revenue is, where the bulk of the readers are, where the industry’s two awards events are trumpeted in every year.
“Interesting question,” says Irna van Zyl, MD of New Media Publishing. “Must be the influence of the sea and the mountain on our souls. On a more serious note, I think it’s probably more by accident, but then again one strong player such as Media24 training strong magazine people – journalists and publishers – has probably created some off-springs, such as Associated with Cosmo, Touchline and New Media.”
Jane Raphaely, co-founder and CEO of Associated Magazines, the largest independent publishers in South Africa (only Cosmopolitan, as inferred by van Zyl, has a shareholding link to the local behemoth), gives the following take on the question: “Cape Town became the publishing capital of South Africa because for practical reasons it paid off to print in the port where the paper was offloaded. Also, it was the Paris of Southern Africa. The natural beauty and charm of the Cape attracted creative people and the universities and colleges produced even more of them.
“Magazines present a glorified view of the place they come from, particularly the English ones, with never a grey rainy day in sight. But in Cape Town you don’t have to fake it, except in winter. Also the Cape has an incredible variety of backdrops within easy reach, unlike the other provinces, and great light. It also has all the things that food editors love like wine, handsome chefs, wild mushrooms, chestnuts, and olive oil, and best of all, lots and lots of beautiful young things for designers and photographers to drool over. That’s why we were able to make magazine magic on the tip of Africa. But I think that Gauteng should be able to give the Cape a run for its money any day soon. I see such street smarts, and feel a buzz that is very inspiring.”
We in Gauteng thank the Raphaely doyenne for the acknowledgement. The stats, however, don’t give us a helluva lot to boast about.
On circulation, the only major categories that Gauteng seems to be winning are men’s interest (Uppercase Media’s FHM posted ABCs of 118,428 for July to December 2004 against Touchline Media’s Men’s Health at 89,562), home and garden with Caxton’s SA Garden & Home at 93,579, and, appropriately, the business and financial niche (granted, there is no mainstream financial title published out of the Cape). KwaZulu-Natal takes the youth niche with Atoll Media’s Saltwater Girl at 35,001, and despite predictions to the contrary it doesn’t look as if 8 Ink Media’s Seventeen, at 30,741, will be catching them any time soon (ABC: Jul to Dec 2004).
Which leaves the Cape taking what is traditionally the big circ category – general interest – with Media24’s Huisgenoot at 340,570, the hotly contested women’s category with Media24’s Sarie at 137,970, and four of the top five titles in the sporting category, lead by Touchline Media’s Kick Off at 60,893. “The Fairest” also hogs the motoring sector, where Ramsay, Son and Parker’s Car smashes all competitors and grabs 70% of the market at ABCs of 105,934. This same fastidious publishing house dominates travel with Getaway at 87,314, and wine with (naturally) Wine. Media24’s Landbouweekblad has been the title of choice in the agricultural sector for decades, and depending on how one defines it, New Media Publishing takes the fine dining and gastronomy sector with Eat In and Eat Out.
There are dozens more categories to drill into, but the point is made. If you want to get a sense of the state of South Africa’s magazine industry, you speak to the guys in Cape Town.
So what’s the word, then? Unsurprisingly, given that most of the ABCs in the major categories are down on the first half of 2004, some Cape executives are far from bullish right now.
“We’ve been struggling in the first quarter of 2005,” says Marc Blachowitz, MD and CEO of Touchline Media. “We’ve been a little slow in starting for the year and I hope it doesn’t continue. We’ll still make our numbers though, and we’re expecting solid results. We’ve come off years and years of massive growth, but it’s impossible to keep 40% going.”
For her part, Jacelize du Preez of Media24 Family Magazines has been watching circulation drop on You, Huisgenoot and (most significantly, with a fall of almost 20%) Drum. “The Drum repositioning hasn’t been as good as we’d hoped. We tried to go slightly younger and more urban, making it a yuppy read with lots of gossip, celebs and sport. It’s a difficult market to crack.”
But if comments like these do signal a national trend, you wouldn’t be able to tell for the new titles coming out of the region. Media24 Family Magazines recently launched Move!, which targets black females in the LSM 4 to 6 category, and has entered into a joint venture with a Brazilian group on the title Ana Maria. Also from Media24, the Creative Living Magazines division last month launched Home, the English version of highly successful Afrikaans home and décor title Tuis (which, in its inaugural 2004 year, returned a remarkable July to December ABC of 56,011). And more is expected shortly from some other Cape groups, who so far are revealing their excitement but not their plans (watch this space).
As for newspapers, while the Cape certainly isn’t dominant in terms of the number of titles, it is firmly in Gauteng’s ballpark on the leading circulation and revenue splits amongst the dailies. In third and fourth place on revenues for the 2004 year are Die Burger and Cape Argus, at R162,7-million and R113,8-million respectively, with first and second place going to the north’s regional dailies Beeld and The Star, at R258,1-million and R218,1-million (Nielsen Media Research).
The circulation comparisons, excluding wunderkind Daily Sun which distributes everywhere but the Western Cape and comes in at ABCs of 364,356, show that Die Burger, The Cape Argus and Cape Times – at 104,102, 73,230 and 49,526 respectively – may be somewhat off The Star (166,461), but are up there with the likes of Sowetan (122,825), Beeld (102,070) and The Citizen (76,183) (ABC: July to December, 2004).
Circulations on the region’s weeklies are equally competitive, allowing for the fact that the big-selling titles in this category are nationally distributed. Media24’s tabloid Son, which is published and sells the majority its copies in the Cape, leads the pack with ABCs of 199,599, up a staggering 110,000 on the same period in 2003. And the Weekend Argus (103,953) is tracking nicely against its Independent Newspapers sister title The Saturday Star (137,385) (ABC: July to December, 2004).
It’s in radio, however, that the Cape is seriously lagging. Only Kfm, acquired late last year by Primedia for a reported R300-million, is currently chasing the country’s big money-spinners. The commercial adult contemporary station was turned around by Felicia Roman, who got it to what she saw as a listenership ceiling of 1,2-million and yearly revenues of around R140-million. Primedia’s hope is that the new management structure will unlock even more value and get the station’s revenue closer to the likes of 94.2 Jacaranda FM and its own 94.7 Highveld Stereo.
Their strategy seems obvious. Showing confidence in a youthful Colleen Louw (30), who has recently taken over from Roman as joint station manager of Kfm and 567 CapeTalk, the group’s top brass in Johannesburg are bundling the Cape stations with Gauteng brands Highveld and Talk Radio 702. The anticipated play is that smoother processes and greater cost efficiencies will allow for more competitive rates across the four brands.
A strong point in the Primedia Cape stations’ favour is that competition on their home territory comes from just two stations, SABC’s Good Hope FM (GHFM) and the Makana Investment Corporation’s P4 Cape Town. By all accounts the former looks to be far less a long-term threat than the latter – GHFM has shed around 260,000 listeners from its 880,000 average of five years ago (Rams), a large chunk of these being defectors to Kfm. Over the same period P4 Cape Town has grown from an average of 176,000 to 578,000 listeners.
“We’re positive looking forward,” says P4 Cape Town’s assistant station manager Philippa Hudson. “Radmark should make a huge difference to the station. We’ve needed a presence in Johannesburg and we’re already seeing a big growth in agency clients.”
And that seems to be the thing about media people in Cape Town. If you can get to the revenue in Gauteng and still have your mountain, why move?