BBC Magazines sold around 90m copies of its titles in the past year as total annual revenues for BBC Worldwide operations broke the £1billion barrier for the first time, according to its annual review published today.
Results for BBC Magazines, Children’s & Licensing were: sales £210.2m – up 3% from £203.4m; profit £13.2m – up 71% from £7.7m
Among the highlights were:
Top Gear broke through the 200,000 circulation barrier (ABC Jan-Jun 2008) and is the most-read men’s magazine in the UK (National Readership Survey July 2008). Radio Times’ circulation remains over the one million mark.
Launches of new titles increased BBC Magazines’ sales to £182.2m, a modest improvement on £177.9m in 2007/08.
Losses were partly reflected by the cost of the investment programme, including the relaunch of topgear.com and the launch of Lonely Planet magazine.
Magazines also wrote down the balance sheet value of our joint venture in India to reflect the weakness of the market there. Match of the Day, the weekly magazine aimed at 8-14 year olds, was launched in March 2008.
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