Interview: Tony Elliott, Time Out publisher (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
WANTED: Editor to give careworn 36-year-old a makeover. Active social life promised if you can tolerate a boss with a reputation among colleagues for " creative interference".
Laura Lee Davies, for five years the editor of Time Out, leaves at the end of the week having decided that she has "done all I need to do here". As she prepares to move to writing and broadcasting - entirely amicably, she insists - Tony Elliott, the chairman and founder, has yet to find a replacement. Filling one of arts journalism's more influential jobs is proving harder than he might have thought - he has been considering applications although he remains open to suggestions. But then Time Out finds itself at a particularly difficult moment.
With a proliferation of free newspaper listings supplements and the internet's expanding reach, the magazine's circulation has taken a hit in recent years.
Although the company dismisses speculation of "swingeing" cutbacks, the new incumbent will clearly face pressure to stop circulation falling further. "It's undeniably tough," Lee Davies says. "But this is a really good time to put in an editor with their own strategy."
There are no signs of gloom in the magazine's Tottenham Court Road offices. Time Out London's circulation may be down 20,000 from its peak to 87,000, but it still contributes handsomely to the group's £3 million-plus annual profits. The company's website makes money, its 48 city guides sell 350,000 copies a year, and it earns licence fees on every local edition sold from Athens to Abu Dhabi. As for Time Out New York, at first dismissed by its rivals, it has proved so successful that the company plans to expand across North America.
"The schedule is to launch in Chicago next February, and, if Chicago is a relatively quick success, it will be easyish to raise the $20 million we need to do LA," says Elliott, who founded the business in 1968 and still owns it outright. He has a commitment to fly six times a year to New York, from where the Chicago business will be run. "San Francisco is clearly also a city we'd like to do. And there's a provisional plan to launch Time Out Toronto in 2006."
Over the next decade, Elliott's "substantial" global expansion plan will bring Time Out to perhaps dozens of the world's great cities. Its imperial march is charted on the floor of his cluttered office overlooking the British Museum dome: beneath photographs of a younger, longhaired Elliott, one of him grinning with Janet Street-Porter (his first wife), and a snapshot of John Lennon, are piles of the Beijing, Dubai and Mexico City editions.
St Petersburg launched earlier this year; Mumbai and Moscow will follow by October. Apart from New York and Paris, they are all joint ventures which rely almost entirely for content on locally recruited staffs.
"What's so exciting is that these guys go off and you think, 'F***, it's just like Time Out!'" says Elliott, who, at 57, appears to have lost none of his enthusiasm for the magazine launched with £70 an aunt gave him for his 21st birthday.
By focusing on the quality of listings, he believes that Time Out can shake up the most saturated magazine markets, even Los Angeles. At the same time, he says, Time Out is significantly expanding its internet presence, with a film site launching in the autumn. The paid-for site will initially be available only to the magazine's subscribers to protect its sale.
Circulation has certainly been hit by free weeklies such as The Guardian's Guide, Metro Life in the Evening Standard and The Knowledge in The Times. Fullprice sales (at £2.35) are down to 69,000 but, Elliott claims, the drop has "flattened out". The free supplements, he insists, will never adequately compete. "They don't offer our depth of information, and people who read Time Out regularly don't see them as a direct replacement. There's been no erosion of our advertising base."
A frequent criticism is that Time Out has sacrificed its early radical edge in favour of consumerism. "I think it's more than fair comment," Elliott replies. "But Time Out ought to reflect what's going on in London, and people's priorities have changed a lot since the Seventies." Having downgraded the news section two years ago, he now feels that "frankly there should be more news". But he adds that the magazine fulfils its social responsibilities by championing and bringing audiences to "the new, the fresh, the innovative" in the arts.
Politically, Elliott thinks Ken Livingstone has been "great" for London. "I sent him £1,000 for his first election campaign, though I never got an acknowledgement." He is "positively anti-Blair".
A near contemporary of Richard Branson at Stowe, Elliott is some way behind in The Sunday Times Rich List, at an estimated £90 million. He lives in St John's Wood with his second wife, Jane, once a picture researcher, and their three teenage sons. He was never a hippy, he says: with his "very middle-class, Daily Mail, slightly suburban background", he was more interested during the late Sixties in building a business than in smoking dope. Only once did he come close to working with Branson: during the 1981 Time Out strike, Branson sought to buy into the business. "I spent a day with him up at the manor, and at dinner he got into a discussion with somebody about politics," Elliott recalls. "He just shouted them down. I realised this was somebody you couldn't work with. He's a trader, basically. We're creators."
Elliott can be demanding, too. "Tony's obsessed with detail, and is always phoning up section editors when he notices a tiny listing is missing a phone number," recalls Dominic Wells, a former Time Out editor, now at The Times.
As one of the few remaining oldstyle magazine owners, Elliott retains that rare power to do what he decides is best. He no longer receives takeover approaches, he explains, "as it's well known that I don't want to sell". Over the next five years, he hopes to find a longterm investor to accelerate the expansion, but he is determined that Time Out will never be part of somebody else's media empire.
"Things will get bigger," he says. "I haven't quite worked out how to do it, but at 57 I still think there's quite a long time to go."
(Evening Standard, July 14 2004)
WANTED: Editor to give careworn 36-year-old a makeover. Active social life promised if you can tolerate a boss with a reputation among colleagues for " creative interference".
Laura Lee Davies, for five years the editor of Time Out, leaves at the end of the week having decided that she has "done all I need to do here". As she prepares to move to writing and broadcasting - entirely amicably, she insists - Tony Elliott, the chairman and founder, has yet to find a replacement. Filling one of arts journalism's more influential jobs is proving harder than he might have thought - he has been considering applications although he remains open to suggestions. But then Time Out finds itself at a particularly difficult moment.
With a proliferation of free newspaper listings supplements and the internet's expanding reach, the magazine's circulation has taken a hit in recent years.
Although the company dismisses speculation of "swingeing" cutbacks, the new incumbent will clearly face pressure to stop circulation falling further. "It's undeniably tough," Lee Davies says. "But this is a really good time to put in an editor with their own strategy."
There are no signs of gloom in the magazine's Tottenham Court Road offices. Time Out London's circulation may be down 20,000 from its peak to 87,000, but it still contributes handsomely to the group's £3 million-plus annual profits. The company's website makes money, its 48 city guides sell 350,000 copies a year, and it earns licence fees on every local edition sold from Athens to Abu Dhabi. As for Time Out New York, at first dismissed by its rivals, it has proved so successful that the company plans to expand across North America.
"The schedule is to launch in Chicago next February, and, if Chicago is a relatively quick success, it will be easyish to raise the $20 million we need to do LA," says Elliott, who founded the business in 1968 and still owns it outright. He has a commitment to fly six times a year to New York, from where the Chicago business will be run. "San Francisco is clearly also a city we'd like to do. And there's a provisional plan to launch Time Out Toronto in 2006."
Over the next decade, Elliott's "substantial" global expansion plan will bring Time Out to perhaps dozens of the world's great cities. Its imperial march is charted on the floor of his cluttered office overlooking the British Museum dome: beneath photographs of a younger, longhaired Elliott, one of him grinning with Janet Street-Porter (his first wife), and a snapshot of John Lennon, are piles of the Beijing, Dubai and Mexico City editions.
St Petersburg launched earlier this year; Mumbai and Moscow will follow by October. Apart from New York and Paris, they are all joint ventures which rely almost entirely for content on locally recruited staffs.
"What's so exciting is that these guys go off and you think, 'F***, it's just like Time Out!'" says Elliott, who, at 57, appears to have lost none of his enthusiasm for the magazine launched with £70 an aunt gave him for his 21st birthday.
By focusing on the quality of listings, he believes that Time Out can shake up the most saturated magazine markets, even Los Angeles. At the same time, he says, Time Out is significantly expanding its internet presence, with a film site launching in the autumn. The paid-for site will initially be available only to the magazine's subscribers to protect its sale.
Circulation has certainly been hit by free weeklies such as The Guardian's Guide, Metro Life in the Evening Standard and The Knowledge in The Times. Fullprice sales (at £2.35) are down to 69,000 but, Elliott claims, the drop has "flattened out". The free supplements, he insists, will never adequately compete. "They don't offer our depth of information, and people who read Time Out regularly don't see them as a direct replacement. There's been no erosion of our advertising base."
A frequent criticism is that Time Out has sacrificed its early radical edge in favour of consumerism. "I think it's more than fair comment," Elliott replies. "But Time Out ought to reflect what's going on in London, and people's priorities have changed a lot since the Seventies." Having downgraded the news section two years ago, he now feels that "frankly there should be more news". But he adds that the magazine fulfils its social responsibilities by championing and bringing audiences to "the new, the fresh, the innovative" in the arts.
Politically, Elliott thinks Ken Livingstone has been "great" for London. "I sent him £1,000 for his first election campaign, though I never got an acknowledgement." He is "positively anti-Blair".
A near contemporary of Richard Branson at Stowe, Elliott is some way behind in The Sunday Times Rich List, at an estimated £90 million. He lives in St John's Wood with his second wife, Jane, once a picture researcher, and their three teenage sons. He was never a hippy, he says: with his "very middle-class, Daily Mail, slightly suburban background", he was more interested during the late Sixties in building a business than in smoking dope. Only once did he come close to working with Branson: during the 1981 Time Out strike, Branson sought to buy into the business. "I spent a day with him up at the manor, and at dinner he got into a discussion with somebody about politics," Elliott recalls. "He just shouted them down. I realised this was somebody you couldn't work with. He's a trader, basically. We're creators."
Elliott can be demanding, too. "Tony's obsessed with detail, and is always phoning up section editors when he notices a tiny listing is missing a phone number," recalls Dominic Wells, a former Time Out editor, now at The Times.
As one of the few remaining oldstyle magazine owners, Elliott retains that rare power to do what he decides is best. He no longer receives takeover approaches, he explains, "as it's well known that I don't want to sell". Over the next five years, he hopes to find a longterm investor to accelerate the expansion, but he is determined that Time Out will never be part of somebody else's media empire.
"Things will get bigger," he says. "I haven't quite worked out how to do it, but at 57 I still think there's quite a long time to go."
(Evening Standard, July 14 2004)
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