TI Media

IPC Media is a large British publishing company, mainly producing consumer magazines. It was formed as the International Publishing Corporation in 1963 from the scattered holdings built up by Cecil Harmsworth King during his control of Daily Mirror Newspapers and Sunday Pictorial Newspapers (the 'Mirror Group'). Apart from the newspapers, which included the provincial chain West of England Newspapers, the main constituents were the magazine publishers George Newnes, Odhams Press and Fleetway Publications.

The corporation at this time controlled nearly a hundred consumer magazines and over 200 trade and technical titles, as well as considerable book publishing operations, controlled in a ramshackle manner since the various companies had all been acquired by the Mirror group with no significant change being made to their management other than the appointment of Mirror Group directors as chairmen.

Sorting out the consequent managerial problems became the job of the Mirror Group managing director Frank Rogers, who in 1965 set up a management development department to rationalise the situation. In 1968 this led to the reorganisation of the group into six divisions:

- IPC Newspapers (including the People and the Daily Herald from Odhams as well as the Mirror and Pictorial.

- IPC Magazines, controlling the consumer magazines.

- IPC Trade and Technical, controlling the specialist magazines.

- IPC Books, for all book publishing, headed by Paul Hamlyn, whose own company had been acquired by IPC

- IPC Printing, controlling all non-newspaper printing operations, headed by Arnold Quick, whose own company had been also acquired by IPC.

- IPC New Products, intended as a launch pad for enterprises using new technology, headed by Alistair McIntosh, who had joined IPC to set up the original management development department. McIntosh however was not a member of the main board.

IPC also had significant holdings in television and paper production, and at this point was the world's largest publishing and printing operation.

Apart from Hamlyn, Quick and McIntosh, all the divisions were headed by chairmen originally from the Mirror Group.

In the same year, a boardroom coup ousted the chairman, Cecil King, whose place was taken by the deputy chairman, Hugh Cudlipp. Frank Rogers remained as managing director.

Cudlipp, a magnificent newspaper editor with no taste for management, was uneasy with this situation or--Gcle2003 10:30, 22 July 2006 (UTC) with the movement that was beginning to take IPC into new directions with computerised publications and other new technology, at the end of 1969 invited Don Ryder, an ex-Mirror Group advertising director who was chairman of the Reed Paper Group in which IPC had nearly a 30% stake, to mount a reverse take-over for the corporation.

Despite a last-ditch effort by some of the management team to prevent it, the take-over went through, and IPC became part of the Reed Paper group. Notably Arnold Quick, Paul Hamlyn, and Frank Rogers all left the corporation, as did those involved with the attempt to stop the takeover, including Graham Cleverley, the chief organiser, director of manpower development, who had been responsible for the design of the 1968 reorganisation.

The corporation then in essence went into decline, losing its position as the world's largest publisher/printer.

In 1974 Reed (which later became Reed Elsevier after a merger with the Dutch publishers Elsevier) separated the company into two groups, IPC, formed of the magazine publication holdings; and Mirror Group Newspapers, formed of the newspapers. The latter division was sold to Robert Maxwell in 1984. In 1987 all comics holdings were placed in a separate division, Fleetway Publications, which was again sold to Robert Maxwell. In the early 1990s IPC launched Loaded which launched a wave of 'lad mags'. In 1998 IPC Magazines, as the division was by then known, was subject to a management buyout, which was financed by Cinven, a venture capitalist group. The company was renamed IPC Media in 2000 to coincide with the millennium. Cinven then sold the group to Time, Inc., the magazine publishing division of Time Warner, in 2001.

Trivia

• IPC's offices were in the high rise King's Reach Tower in South London. The building often featured in the company's titles.

References

• Time Inc. To Acquire IPC From Cinven (From Time-Warner website)
• History of IPC Media on the IPC Media website
• Trinity Mirror Group History on the Trinity Mirror Group website
• Reed Elsevier profile on ketupa.net
• The Fleet Street Disaster, Graham Cleverley, Constables, 1976; and Managers and Magic, Graham Cleverley, Longmans 1971 (London) and EP Dutton 1972 (New York) tell parts of the story.

See also

External links

• The IPC Media website