BBC Worldwide Press Releases

14.11.02

BBC Magazines and Telegraph Group launch gardening magazine

BBC Magazines and Telegraph Group Limited have signed a deal to launch a new gardening magazine in spring 2003.

BBC Magazines publishes the UK’s market leading consumer gardening title BBC Gardeners’ World magazine, as well as Easy Gardening and Gardens Illustrated.

The new title, provisionally called `The Daily Telegraph Gardening magazine’ will extend the relationship between Telegraph readers and gardening editorial onto the UK magazine newsstand, reaching readers not currently catered for by gardening magazines.

The new magazine will provide in-depth coverage on areas of special gardening interest, utilising both Telegraph Group Limited and BBC Magazines’ unrivalled understanding of the gardening category.

BBC Magazines Publishing Director, Marcus Arthur said: “BBC Magazines is the UK’s biggest gardening magazines publisher on the newsstand and we are investing in maintaining our market leading position in the category. We are delighted to be working with Telegraph Group Limited on such an exciting project and hope that it is the start of a long term relationship.”

Says Alex Stitt, Enterprise Director, Telegraph Group Limited: “This is a continuance of the company’s strategic move in migrating successful brands from the newspaper to the newsstand in an alternative media format. The Saturday ‘Gardening’ section has been a highly successful launch for the paper, and we look forward to building an equally impressive reputation in the gardening magazine market.”

The first issue will be on sale at the beginning of March 2003, with a second later in the spring. The Daily Telegraph Gardening magazine is being published by BBC Magazines and distributed by Frontline Ltd. It will be supported by a retail marketing campaign, as well as consumer advertising through the Telegraph and BBC Magazines portfolio.

Notes
BBC Magazines is the UK’s third largest consumer magazines publisher, with a portfolio of more than 30 regular titles. BBC Gardeners’ World magazine has a circulation of 350,064 (ABC: Jan to Jun 2002) - more than all of its newsstand competitors combined. BBC Easy Gardening was launched as a one-off publication in spring 2002 and will return in 2003 having recorded sales of around 90,000. Gardens Illustrated, published ten times a year, recorded an annual ABC of 32,120 for Jan to Dec 2001.

BBC Magazines is a division of BBC Worldwide Ltd - the BBC’s commercial consumer arm. BBC Worldwide does not use licence fee income for its activities and re-invests in public service programming. In 2001/2002 BBC Worldwide returned £106 million to the BBC.

The Daily Telegraph is Britain’s biggest selling quality daily newspaper. The Daily Telegraph is the only national newspaper with a dedicated gardening section, published every Saturday. The Daily Telegraph is the official media partner of BBC Gardeners’ World Live 2003 and is sponsoring a garden at The Chelsea Flower Show 2003.

The Sunday Telegraph enjoys huge loyalty from its remarkably mixed readership of over two million. With eight sections it provides comprehensive and definitive news from the world of business and finance, alongside expert coverage of sport, news and investigative reporting.

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