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Time Out


Time Out is a publishing company based in London. The company's most well known product is the Time Out weekly listings magazine. The original magazine, with listings for London, was published in 1968 by Tony Elliott. He remains the owner of the group. The Time Out Group Limited has expanded over the past 35 years to publish listings guides for other cities, travel guides, guides to specific aspects of cities (such as Eating and Drinking guides) and have established a similar prescence online.

The Time Out weekly listing magazines for a particular city contains information about events in film, theatre, fashion, literature and all other artistic events happening. Twelve cities and larger areas currently published (April 2004 data) including London, New York, Paris, Beijing, Dubai, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Cyprus, Moscow and Athens. Events listings are complemented with articles, typically featuring celebrities appearing in one of the listed events. Many publications are in English. Weekly city guides are in local languages (e.g. the Athens guide is in Greek). The London edition costs £2.50 per week (January 2005 prices) and has a circulation of 86,000 copies and a readership of 374,000 people (Jan-Jun 2003 figures). These figures are down from a record high of 110,496 achieved in Jan-June 1995.

Whilst the London edition is solely owned by the Time Out Group, other editions are partly or wholly owned by other entities. For instance the ownership of a Chicago edition of the magazine to be begin publication in February 2005 is split 50-50 between the group and Joe Mansueto . Elliott has said in an interview that he wants to expand to Los Angeles and San Fransisco once the Chicago venture has been fully launched. Other editions are not owned by the Time Out Group at all - for instance Time Out Mumbai is operated solely by a publisher licencing the Time Out brand. Some critics in the financial press have questioned whether this business model has allowed the Time Out brand to expand as quickly as it might have. The biggest selling Time Out is currently Time Out New York (45% owned by the Time Out Group). First published in 1995, it currently has a circulation of 128,000. TONY has been nominated for a National Magazine Award for General Excellence and an Acres of Diamonds Award for best consumer-magazine launch. It has a quarterly offshoot aimed at children called Time Out New York Kids [www.vindigo.com/news/Timeoutny_12042000.html].

The Time Out Group Limited conducts most of its business from London, New York and Paris.

Time Out has published food, drink and restaurant guides have been published for London, New York and Paris. For London, its core city, it has also published guides for students, shopping and health and fitness amongst others. The Time Out brand is also licenced to 48 travel guides to cities around the world published by Penguin Books. Although similar in style to other guides such as those published by Lonely Planet and Rough Guide , the Time Out guides tend to focus on more hip happenings in each city. Time Out was instrumental in bringing about specific listings for gay and lesbian readers, a formula followed now by similar publications.

The Group also publishes an annual film guide, being a compendium of short reviews of all major film releases.

In 2003 the Group reported revenues of £25m and a profit of £228,000. Elliott values his company at "more than £30m".

See also

List of magazines

References

Last updated: 05-13-2005 07:56:04