05/03/2013
NEWS STORY
Bernie Ecclestone has often said that Formula One isn't just competing against other sports but also other forms of entertainment as it is in the show-business industry. It has all the key ingredients going for it - speed, celebrity guests, huge sums of money pouring in and superstar drivers. However, despite their best efforts, some of the media which covers F1 sometimes fails to put it in an entertaining light.
At Pitpass we do our best and our independent, irreverent tone has become our hallmark. When it comes to magazines about F1 it doesn't always work out that way and this may be because the publishers, like many of the sponsors, seem to have a traditional background and come across as being somewhat straight-laced. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this and it often matches the attitude in F1 which thrives on formality.
Monthly magazine F1 Racing is published by Haymarket Group which is majority-owned by Tory peer Lord Heseltine and his family. Late last year it got competition in the form of GP International which is another monthly magazine about the sport and it happens to be edited by former F1 Racing editor Hans Seeberg. GP International is produced by Cambridgeshire-based Bright Publishing which is majority owned by former advertising manager Matt Pluck and publishing director Andy Brodgen.
There is now a new F1 magazine publisher on the scene and his background is hardly typical. It is also far from boring.
Last week a new magazine, simply called Formula, hit the newsstands. Lewis Hamilton adorns its cover and contributors include Sarah Holt, former BBC Sport reporter, and Natalie Pinkham who will this year take over the reins hosting Sky's F1 Show. Alongside their biographies on the magazine's contributors page is the name Paul Chaplin who is listed as being the magazine's publisher. In fact, Chaplin is a pseudonym used by Paul Baxendale-Walker, a former solicitor who was struck off in 2007 and directed and starred in X-rated movies before selling his adult entertainment company Bluebird Films last year to invest in magazines.
Baxendale-Walker sold Bluebird last year and started investing in magazines which brings us back to Formula. Pinkham, Holt and the magazine's other contributors are working under editor Ian Edmondson who some Pitpass readers may have heard of though not through F1. This is because Edmondson is the former head of news and assistant editor of the defunct newspaper the News of the World. He was arrested in 2011 on suspicion of unlawfully intercepting voicemail messages and was charged last year.
So who is Baxendale-Walker? His career in the porn industry was a far cry from his original job as a solicitor who specialised in tax. He was struck off in 2007 but was not left without a job. Baxendale-Walker founded Bluebird from 2005 and, according to an interview he gave last year to lad's magazine Loaded, he ended up on the other side of the camera through being involved with one of the adult stars.
Baxendale-Walker created Bluebird by working with a team of well-established porn stars and it became one of the leading adult entertainment producers worldwide. According to reports in tabloids, Bluebird was behind a string of X-rated titles with bizarre names such as Ello, Ello: Lust In France and Sugar Daddy.
Last year the Guardian reported that Baxendale-Walker introduced himself as Paul Chaplin in an interview with the newspaper and it added that one of his starring roles was as the character Jo-Kerr in Katwoman, a blue spoof of the Batman franchise. Reporters at The Sun newspaper know far more about Baxendale-Walker's on-screen exploits and anyone who feels inclined to read more about them can find plenty of lurid details right here.
Baxendale-Walker sold Bluebird last year and started investing in magazines which brings us back to Formula. Pinkham, Samos and the magazine's other contributors are working under editor Ian Edmondson who some Pitpass readers may have heard of though not through F1. This is because Edmondson is the former head of news and assistant editor of the defunct newspaper the News of the World. He was arrested in 2011 on suspicion of unlawfully intercepting voicemail messages and was charged last year.
According to a report printed in a trade publication in January, Formula also has its own grooming and beauty editor (yes, you read that correctly) whose name is Cheryl Carter and appears on the magazine's contributors page.
Some early reports have given Formula a thumbs up with F1 PR Emma Buxton saying on Twitter last week that she "had a sneak peek via client - looks great! Impressive contributor/ editorial team too!"
The other key figure behind the magazine is Palladino whose background is in athlete management. He was the majority owner of the Buckinghamshire-based company Distinct Management Agency which was dissolved in May last year. Distinct still shows as being the registrant of Formula magazine's website and was also named in a job advertisement asking prospective magazine designers to urgently contact it with their CVs.
Interestingly, according to listings held by the book shop Waterstones another one of Palladino's companies was due to publish a magazine called Chicane in 2009. It doesn't look like it was ever released and presumably it won't be on the horizon now that Formula has been launched.
It is a tough time for magazines in general at the moment. A Smiths News trading statement for the 19 weeks to 12 January showed newspaper and magazine distribution sales had fallen 4.7% on a like for like basis. Looking at the trends over time shows even steeper slumps in some cases.
According to the UK's Audit Bureau of Circulations, F1 Racing's total average net circulation per issue increased by 105 between 2011 and 2012 although its circulation outside the UK and Republic of Ireland fell by 1,105. It gave F1 Racing a circulation of 48,473 in 2012 which is a 24.7% fall from its total five years earlier when McLaren Group head of communications Matt Bishop spent his last year at the helm of the magazine. Six years before that, in 2001, F1 Racing's total average net circulation per issue came to 98,056 meaning that it has fallen by more than half since then. Autosport magazine's total average net circulation per issue fell by 8.9% alone last year as it came to 24,438 in 2012.
Whilst the circulation figures for GP International are not yet known, other metrics are already in the public domain. For example, 19 out of the 148 pages in its latest issue are external advertising which comes to 12.8% of the total.
Magazines which cover F1 haven't just been affected by falling circulation. For example, when North One Sport, the former rightsholder of the World Rally Championship, collapsed in 2012 it led to Sportspro Media, the company which publishes trade journal SportsPro, being owed £6,000.
It looks like it will be quite a while before we see other major publishing firms wading in to the market to take on Haymarket with a printed monthly sports magazine about F1.
Unlike smaller independent firms, major publishing groups would only launch a rival to F1 Racing with the intention of out-selling it. The last thing a major publishing group wants to do is launch a new magazine which ends up second to F1 Racing since the company could lose a great deal of face as a result. This is less of an issue for independent firms which enables them to be more nimble. Accordingly, major firms have to throw their financial weight behind new launches and this increases their risk. With more at stake they wouldn't want to make any obvious mistakes and the launch window is the most obvious place to start.
Ecclestone's official F1 Magazine launched at the start of the 2001 season and it doesn't take a genius to work out that this window is the ideal one when it comes to releasing a new print product. Formula has certainly timed it right. The start of the 2013 season is less than two weeks away and no other new printed F1 magazines are on the horizon. It means that another major publisher is not likely to come in until next year. The alternative is releasing iPad-only magazines and given that pretty much all the most important people in F1 own one of these devices it is strange that none of the major publishers have gone down this route yet. It is surely only a matter of time.