Are you an entertainments supremo?
Could you handle Crackerjack?
Asks Evening Cancer editor Mike Norton on the back of his job supplement in today’s paper. So what the fuck is this gormless accountant up to now then?
It might sound strangely familiar to some of you but here’s what Norton’s crackers Crackerjack plan is all about:
It will be the definitive going-out website for Bristol, featuring a comprehensive guide to eating out in pubs and restaurants with news, reviews and listings covering everything you need to know about the local food scene.
So where does that leave Venue magazine then? Just before Christmas it was forced to move into Norton’s lair at the Lubianka and now we find Norton setting up a free web based publication in direct competition with the magazine.
If you want to apply to run the naffly-named production the full details are here. But be warned: you’re gonna be very busy. With just two staff you’ll be required to run a website and produce TWO supplements – one for the Cancer and one for the Western Daily Press.
So if your bag is working 100 hour weeks at a failing media empire with a collapsing circulation under the management of a little Hitler more interested in shafting one of his own publications then it’s the job for you!
The BUP’s got history on this front though, hasn’t it?
Bringing out the free, glossy This Is Bristol when out-of-town outfit Ad Hoc tried to pitch up in Bristol, and continuing to run it long after the enemy was routed, before slipping it into the paper as an insert (see also Seven). That was all going on at the same time as the Venue acquisition was going through, if mine memory fails me not.
S’all about advertising revenue, though, isn’t it? Squeezing out any hint of opposition, rinsing the advertisers, making BUP the only show in town, playing the numbers game, making the Post and the WDP the gatekeepers for all advertising in the city. Cover sales are so far down the list as to be meaningless (which is no doubt why many big-hitting advertisers can forgive the, *ahem* rather broad disparity between claimed circulation and actual sales for certain local weekly what’s-on guides, to the point that you could park a planet or two between the circ numbers and the actual print run).
No, it’s market control and brand ubiquity; it doesn’t really matter if there are truckloads of returns to pulp or store, so long as there is no competition. The important thing is to deliver as many higher earners to your advertising client base. That’s where the money is. That’s why Metro is in any way successful, despite the fact that for most people who ever cast an eye over it it’s utter bilge. It’s *delivering an audience to its advertising*. Content is an aside!
Maybe I’m just being naive, but wouldn’t it make more sense to launch a Venue website? If you had any long-term plans for Venue, that is?
Crackerjack – just what decade did they focus group that name???
Don’t think this is anything to do with Venue to be honest, have you not seen the very new bristol and environs food magazine ‘the fork’ or whatever?
Think they’re trying to nail that at first glance, food in venue is to be fair a very small section…