And then there was one: Canadian Plastics absorbs Plastics in Canada

In what was clearly its strategic intention all along, the Business Information Group (Glacier Media Inc.) is erasing a former publishing rival Plastics in Canada, leaving the 68-year-old Canadian Plastics as the only trade book serving the Canadian plastics industry.

PiC had ceased appearing in print in June 2010, but Rogers Publishing Limited kept the brand alive through a website and an e-letter until May, when it was sold as part of a package of 15 trade pubs and digital brands to Glacier's Business Information Group. The erstwhile arch-rivalry went back to the days when Plastics in Canada, had been a Southam Business Publications title. At that time Southam matched Rogers title-for-title in many trade publishing categories. 

At the end of the month, all traces of PiC will be folded into Canadian Plastics and subscribers to the e-letter will now receive its weekly e-letter instead.

Rogers Publishing merges consumer and business/professional divisions into one

In what has become a cascade of inevitabilities, with Ken Whyte soon to succeed Brian Segal as CEO of Rogers Publishing, now the two previously separate divisions -- consumer and business & professional -- are being merged. Still more inevitable outcomes are the departure of John Milne, senior vice-president of the business and professional group and Paul Williams, vice-president, brand extension and online development. 

A story in Marketing (which, as part of the business and professional group is directly affected) quotes Segal as saying that the company's overall strategy is to "“work in a more integrated manner to better serve our customers and markets."

Magazine publishers formerly reporting to Milne will now report to Patrick Renard, whose responsibilities have been expanded beyond vice-president of finance.

The operational change comes as Segal himself prepares to leave the company. In September, Kenneth Whyte, currently executive vice-president of the consumer publishing group, will assume Segal’s role overseeing the newly merged operation.

Rogers Publishing also recently sold 15 trade magazines to Vancouver’s Glacier Media.

Rogers launches magazine for the wealthy called Canadian Capital

Rogers Publishing has launched a new magazine aimed at Canadian entrepreneurs. It's called Canadian Capital and has a companion website called Capitalmagazine.ca.

 The new quarterly is designed to meet the special needs of business owners in a complex world of building and managing wealth, says a release. The first issue's cover story features clothier Harry Rosen talking about handing over the reins of his business to his son, Larry.

"This audience has a huge appetite for unbiased advice," says Canadian Capital executive editor Philip Porado. "Many of them have worked so hard on their businesses, they haven't had time to focus on managing, growing and enjoying their wealth. We have access to the experts who can show them how."

The new magazine, which as a circulation of 35,000 and is being distributed to a controlled list of business addresses,  keys off Rogers' considerable stable of financially related publications such as Advisor's Edge and Benefits Canada. Interested readers can also subscribe through an RSS feed or by receiving  a weekly e-letter.

"Given our long-standing relationships with the financial community, Canadian Capital and Capitalmagazine.ca are natural extension for us," says publisher Donna Kerry. "We're leveraging our connections to bring readers valuable expert guidance they can not get anywhere else."  

The editorial focus is indicated by the tag line Plan, Prosper, Provide and the inaugural issue profiles execs who developed second careers in philanthropy, people who reinvent themselves after they retire and how to calculate multiples when selling a business. Content will also be about planning a legacy, building and managing family wealth and transitions in businesses.

Rogers and Transcon team up to cut ad insertion lead times to 2 weeks

Canada's two largest magazine publishing companies, Rogers Publishing and Transcontinental Media, have announced that they are cooperating in cutting the lead times for advertisers' insertion in the companies' monthly magazines. Pressexpress is an ad-close schedule that means ad creative can be sumbitted only two weeks prior to publication.

Brian Segal, president and CEO of Rogers told Marketing magazine that Pressexpress will make advertising more atttractive.

“Both us and Transcontinental were of the view that we needed to reset the position of magazines within the minds of media buyers,” said Segal. “We think it helps reposition the industry in terms of being more urgent, more timely and more competitive with some of the other media cycles.

“My sense is that [advertisers] will see more opportunities to match merchandising strategy and marketing planning with advertising. If they know they have eight or 10 or 12 merchandising events or cycles that they’re working on for the year, but that [under the previous ad-close schedule] the creative might not be ready, they’ll now have the option to buy magazines where they may not have before.”

Transcontinental now has a long-term contract to print all of Rogers magazines, so the ad insertion system is a natural extension of their business collaboration.

Francine Tremblay, senior vice-president, consumer magazines for Transcontinental Media, said:

“Advertisers are always waiting to see what the latest thing is before making a final decision,” said Tremblay. “Final decisions are critical in our industry, and the more information you have, the best final decision you will make.”

Rogers plans to launch the Pressexpress schedule for the January 2010 issues of Chatelaine and Châtelaine, with the March issues of Today’s Parent, Flare, Glow, Pure and the French and English versions of LouLou to follow. Schedules for the company’s weekly and bi-weekly consumer magazines, such as Maclean’s, Hello! and Canadian Business, will not be affected as the already provide short lead times.

Transcontinental will launch Pressexpress with the January issues of Canadian Living and Coup de Pouce, with other titles to follow in March and April.

Duncan Hood named editor of MoneySense, managing editor of Canadian Business

[This post has been updated]Duncan Hood, formerly a senior editor at Maclean's, has been named to the double-barrelled job of editor of MoneySense magazine and a* managing editor of Canadian Business. Word came in a message to staff from publisher of all three magazines, Ken Whyte.

[*Conan Tobias was the managing editor; now he is a managing editor.]

His appointment to both jobs is consistent with a recent trend at Rogers Publishing with senior editorial managers taking on multiple responsibilities. First, Ken Whyte was named both editor and publisher of Maclean's. Then in a major shakeup, Whyte took over as publisher for all the news and business titles, including Maclean's, Canadian Business, MoneySense and Profit. This week it was announced that Christine Dewairy, the art director of Maclean's, will be responsible for design at all four publications.

Prior to being at Maclean's for the past year, managing special packages to writing and editing business features, Hood had been a features editor at MoneySense for four years, during which time he won five National Magazine Awards—three golds and two silvers—in the personal finance category. He has degrees in journalism and physics and completed the Canadian Securities Course.

In other moves at Canadian Business, Pat Ireland, Robert Near, and Annette Boudreau have been laid off as associate editors (fact-checkers). Kasey Coholan and Jacqueline Nelson remain as associate editors. This, too, is consistent. Soon after Whyte took over at Maclean's, the previously rigorous fact-checking department was essentially done away with. Several editorial positions at Canadian Business have been filled, including deputy editor Lianne George, senior writer (Calgary) Tony Seskus, deputy art director Una Janacievc and cover designer Jason Logan.

Related posts:

• Six Canadian Business staffers and EIC of MoneySense magazine fired
• Chidley is special projects czar for Maclean's and Canadian Business
• Rogers shakeup: Whyte and Mitchell now each multi-title uber-publishers
  

Maclean's AD Dewairy takes over Canadian Business, MoneySense & Profit

The recent consolidation of management and staff dismissals at Rogers Publishing's news and business consumer group proceeds apace, as Christine Dewairy, the art director of Maclean's, takes over responsibility for Canadian Business, MoneySense and Profit magazines. This means the four publications share one publisher and one art director. According to a story in Mastheadonline, Dewairy will do the work of three other art directors let go, including Tim Davin at CB, Karen Simpson at MoneySense and Marcello Biagioni at Profit.

"She will be assembling a team of designers and photo people to support all the magazines, under her leadership," said Suneel Khanna, senior director of communications for Rogers Consumer Publishing.

One anonymous commenter on the Masthead story acidly noted:

..and in related news, Barack Obama will now take over being Prime Minister of Canada, 'cause you know, anyone who has only ONE massively-important-and-stressful-more-than-full-time job is a slacker!

Related posts:

• Six Canadian Business staffers and EIC of MoneySense magazine fired
• Chidley is special projects czar for Maclean's and Canadian Business
• Rogers shakeup: Whyte and Mitchell now each multi-title uber-publishers
  

Rogers shakeup: Whyte and Mitchell now each multi-title uber-publishers

[This post has been updated] Rogers Consumer Publishing announced it has consolidated many of its magazines under two people today.

• Ken Whyte, the editor and publisher of Maclean's magazine, becomes a vice-president, responsible as publisher for Maclean's, Canadian Business, Profit and MoneySense magazines.

• Kerry Mitchell, the publisher of Chatelaine (and, until recently, Châtelaine), also becomes a vice-president and assumes the publisher's job at Flare as well as becoming executive publisher of trade and custom titles Cosmetics, Cosmétiques, Glow and Pure magazines in the role of executive publisher.

In the company's release over the signature of senior vice-president Marc Blondeau, no word was uttered about the fate of longtime Canadian Business and Profit publisher Deborah Rosser or Flare publisher Orietta Minatel.[UPDATE: (However, a post by Masthead says that they have been let go by the company.) ]

[UPDATE: the company memo to staff said:

Kelly Latimer, publisher of Glow and Pure, Jim Hicks, publisher of Cosmetics and Cosmétiques, Lisa Tant, editor-in-chief at Flare and Tracy Finklestein, in her capacity as director of business development and promotions at Flare, will now report to Kerry.]

Former Flare publisher David Hamilton named publisher of Hello! Canada

David Hamilton, after a 9-month hiatus following his departure from a long tenure as Publisher of Flare magazine, has been named publisher of Hello! Canada magazine by Rogers Publishing Limited. He starts officially next week.

"We are very happy that David will be leading the Hello! Canada team in the role of Publisher," said Marc Blondeau, Senior-Vice President, Consumer Publishing, Rogers Publishing Limited, in a press release. "His impressive track record of success in publishing and marketing will allow us to build on the tremendous successes we've seen in bringing this world-renowned magazine to the Canadian marketplace."

Hello! Canada is a franchise of a worldwide company, with about 8 million circulation in 100 countries, according to a release. The U.K. edition of Hello! was launched in 1988, creating the celebrity magazine marketplace in that country, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Spanish magazine Hola!, which first debuted in 1944.

Hello! Canada recently announced that it guarantees advertisers an average circulation of 45,000 copies a week.

Chocolat magazine to melt away; Rogers announces closure

[This post has been updated]

Rogers Publishing is killing Chocolat magazine, the end of a controversial cooperative venture with Canada Post, launched just last year. The staff of the English, French and online components of the magazine have been informed. Significant layoffs are expected, though some staffers will be absorbed in other titles. The last issue, October, will be distributed September 17.

Marc Blondeau, Senior Vice-President, Consumer Publishing, Rogers Publishing Limited explained in a memo to staff that "the path to profitability was longer than we expected".

Decisions like this are never easy to make. Leading companies in any industry must take calculated risks and then learn from their experiences in the marketplace. Despite strong reader support as shown by internal research and the fact that we broke ground with a number of new advertisers, overall advertising support has not reached the levels needed to sustain publication.

As revealed in earlier posts Chocolat was presented to the marketplace as a new take on the home decor category. Its principle circulation gimmick was that it was sent to about a quarter of a million people who paid a fee for change of address notices with Canada Post and who were, therefore, presumed to be interested in home improvements, decor and renovations.

It was intended that Chocolat would build on the success of Rogers' other shopping-related title LouLou , its bilingual publishing expertise and the company's considerable marketing and sales clout. Apparently the advertising community wasn't as quick as Rogers had hoped in taking up the opportunity. A full page in the magazine was $13,905 according to the online media kit.

[UPDATE] Media in Canada quotes Brenda Bookbinder, portfolio director at Toronto-based PHD Canada, saying that Chocolat's demise is "very, very surprising. I thought the concept of a shopping book in the shelter category really made sense when they launched. "Also, its publisher was Rogers, which has a lot of resources, so you don't expect that they're going to fold a book," she adds. "Their official line is that this is happening because of unenthusiastic ad support, but if they were having troubles, I didn't notice. We certainly put a lot of clients into it. And there's a lot of growth at (comparable) Canadian magazines."

[FURTHER UPDATE] Masthead magazine's website (sub req'd) reports that conversion of freely distributed copies and newsstand sell-through of Chocolat was low.

The free distribution would end after a year. The idea was to get readers to switch to the $14.95 paid subscription. The conversion rate was low: Chocolat had 3,802 English subscribers and 942 French subscribers as of Feb. 13, 2007, according to a sworn statement published in CARD.

Rogers circulated 30,000 copies of each issue on newsstands, selling it for $4.95. According to CARD, the average single copy sales of the English version were 12,500, while the French version averaged 8,000.

$15 million gift to Ryerson business faculty; becomes Ted Rogers School of Management

Ted Rogers, whose cable, phone and magazine publishing empire is well known, has -- with his wife Loretta -- given $15 million to Ryerson University which, in turn, has named its brand spanking new business school the Ted Rogers School of Management. The school is on Dundas Street in Toronto, between Yonge and Bay Streets.

The majority of the gift will be used to establish 52 new undergraduate and graduate student awards and scholarships, at unprecedented levels for the University, said Ryerson President Sheldon Levy. The gift will also establish a new Research Chair to seed academic initiatives that will attract outstanding faculty and create centres of excellence in management research.

While Levy said this was the only school to which Rogers has given his name, in fact the Rogers Communications Centre at Ryerson has been the home to the School of Journalism and Radio and Television Arts for some 15 years; the school is named after Ted Rogers' father, however, a radio pioneer.

Rogers rehires fired Hello editor to edit Marketing

According to a story in mastheadonline (sub req'd) Rogers Publishing has rehired Christopher Loudon after firing him as editor of Hello! just two months ago. He is to be the new editor of Marketing, which has been without an editor since Stan Sutter was fired in January. Marketing has undergone a major revamp, with reduced frequency (every two weeks) and a redesign. Now, it has a new editor. Before Hello!, Loudon was editor of Inside Entertainment (Kontent) and TV Guide (Transcon). (His Canadian career started out as a research manager with Comac magazines in the '80s, after a time in New York with Reader's Digest.