Indian publishing group chooses not to renew licenses for big titles

Indian publishing company The Outlook Group has chosen not to renew its licenses for three big franchised titles: Marie Claire (Groupe Marie Claire); People (Time Inc.) and Geo (Gruner + Jahr (G+J)). According to a post by Medi4Nama, the editorial chairman of The Outlook Group, Vinod Mehta, said the three magazines were losing money because of the huge licensing fees for these three "white elephants" being paid to foreign title holders. 

"The decision to keep licensed brands running are eventually only going to be driven by the ability to sell advertising," said the post, "because the groups that bring them in are not vested in building these brands, because they don’t own them: these associations are, at best, transient."

Outlook publishes a weekly newsmagazine called Outlook and other titles include Outlook Money, Outlook Traveller, Outlook Business as well as the three titles cited.