Future plc

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Future plc
Company typePublic Limited Company
IndustryMagazine and internet publishing
FoundedChris Anderson, 1985
HeadquartersBath, England, UK
Key people
Stevie Spring, Karon Trainor, Caroline Holloway, Greame Harding, Robert Price, Simon Wear, John Bowman
Number of employees
1200+
Websitehttp://www.futureplc.com/

Future plc (LSE: FUTR) is an international special-interest media company. Future Publishing is its UK business, jointly based in Bath and London. The brand produces magazines, websites and events in a range of specialist sectors including games, technology, automotive, cycling, films and photography. It publishes over than 80 magazines and attracts over 25 million unique users to its websites.

The buildings of Future clutter the Georgian city of Bath. They have offices in Quay House, Westgate Buildings, Princes Street, Monmouth Street, Coterall Court, Kingsmead Square as well as a Photo Studio located nears Sainsburys. Quay House sees most of the editors and their works.

History

Future Publishing was created in 1985 by an unemployed computer journalist, Chris Anderson, working with two colleagues from his house in Somerton, Somerset, England. It began with the publication of Amstrad Action magazine, followed by further titles, including 8000 Plus (for the Amstrad PCW) and PC Plus (for PCs). [1] The first couple of issues bombed, but due to the delay in processing magazine returns, Chris Anderson was unaware of this. However the company was saved from bankruptcy when Chris decided to covermount a cassette on the front cover giving away software. In the days before the web and digital distribution this was a genuine innovation and the third issue sold out. The company expanded, moving to Bath in the summer of 1987. The company - by now employing two to three dozen staff - was a very early adopter of desktop publishing. The company rapidly expanded over the course of the next ten years, specialising in computing and gaming magazines. During the 1990s it launched many successful and influential titles such as gaming magazine Edge, guide to "Tomorrow's Technology Today" T3 (since evolved into a lifestyle technology magazine) internet title .net and computer design bible Computer Arts. Another success for the company has been multiformat gaming title GamesMaster - launched to accompany the television series of the same name, but going on to outlast it by many years, and remaining the UK's best-selling multiformat games title.

Future enjoyed considerable success by developing specialist magazines targeted at enthusiasts, with both the writers and readers sharing the same commitment and knowledge of the subject matter. This approach hit its zenith with cult gaming title Amiga Power, a magazine that cheerfully attacked its own advertisers and other magazines within Future. Regrettably, if unsurprisingly, this style was not duplicated in other titles, but the company has remained focused on producing specialist titles for narrow audience segments.

Founder Chris Anderson sold his majority stake in the company in 1994, moving to San Francisco to develop GP Publications, a small US magazine company bought by Future in 1993. Future was bought by Pearson New Entertainment Europe. Several successful titles were launched in the following years including Total Film and Playstation: The Official Magazine - the company's biggest success story, becoming the third best-selling men's magazine in the UK - but Pearson struggled to achieve its goals and in 1998 Future was put up for sale. The company at that time comprised Future and French publisher Edicorp, both of which were acquired in a management buyout by the Future board. Chris Anderson backed the buyout and returned as non-executive chairman.

Ensuing success

The company expanded rapidly, opening offices or buying existing companies in Germany, Italy and Poland.

Due to its specialisation in computing and internet titles, the company was an enthusiastic adopter of internet publishing during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, launching numerous websites based around its magazine titles and online-focused magazines such as Internet Works, Business 2.0, and the world's first email magazine Future Gamer. Buoyed by its association with the internet and computing, the company floated on the Stock Exchange in 2000 in a complex deal which merged the print assets from Anderson's US Imagine Publishing into the new PLC, and the share price rocketed to around £9. The success did not last, with share price and profits crashing as the dot-com bubble burst. The company avoided bankruptcy by a rights issue, large-scale redundancies, the sale of Business 2.0 to AOL Time Warner and the sale or closure of its offices in Germany and Poland.

Into the new millennium

In 2001, the company got into major problems, shedding many employees and getting 'back to basics' with focus on strong print titles. This was a particularly difficult time for the company. Online development was slow, something Future is only just now starting to conquer. Online, the company has invested and engaged in a rapid expansion of digital activities, most recently with the launches of TechRadar.com, an in-depth consumer electronics site and Musicradar.com, a site for music-makers.

Following several years of consolidation, Future embarked on a new expansion campaign in 2003, acquiring established companies and individual magazines in the UK, France, and the US including PC Zone, Revolver, and Pregnancy and Baby. The company also launched into the children's market with new licensed magazines for the JETIX television channel, and the official Duel Masters magazine based on the popular trading card game.

In 2006 a new CEO was appointed, former Clear Channel executive Stevie Spring. She took over from Greg Ingham who was largely responsible for prior overstretching of the company, having established an aim to double the size of Future - this led to poor deals. In 2005 Future bought 38 titles from Highbury House, including Fast Bikes and Fast Car magazine, after the Competition Commission blocked an attempt to buy the company outright, citing a potential monopoly in games magazines.

The current Chief Executive of Future UK is Robert Price, who took over from Colin Morrison (formerly MD and COO) in 2004. The corporate motto is Media with Passion. Since the overstretching and Spring's appointment, the company has embarked on a strategy of focusing on English language specialist interest content whether on or offline.

With this focus, it has sold or closed more than fifty under-performing magazine titles and disposed of its Italian and French operations to concentrate on its English-language offering. Future licenses its magazine content to local publishers in more than thirty international territories and is currently one of the world's biggest exporters of licensed content.

It has also grown its partnership publishing activity through its customer publishing arm, FuturePlus and its official partnerships with clients including Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sky.

The F Word and 1741

Future plc publishes two internal magazines. The first is called F-Word (F meaning Future) which catches up on the the latest activities and gossip of the staff and it is about the direction the company is going in, featuring the board meetings chaired by Stevie Spring. It comes out monthly and each month, there is a featured person on the cover of the magazine - often one of the actual editors. Photographs include the most recent events such as the executive memebers parties (such as at Christmas) and all other goings on. 1741 also comes out weekly but is about more sensitive issues, the name itself it based on the security code used for all Bath's alarmed buidlings. Unlike the F-Word, 1741 is sold in newsagents[2].

Key titles

Key magazine titles published by Future Publishing include:

Future also holds the official license for magazines from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo to publish titles such as:

Key websites

Key online sites published by Future Publishing include:

Popular defunct titles

References

  1. ^ "Future plc - Company History". August 28, 2006. Retrieved 2007-12-09. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameters: |accessyear=, |accessmonthday=, and |coauthors= (help)
  2. ^ http://www.futureplc.com/future/portfolio/magazines.jsp

External links

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