Future plc

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Future plc
Type Plc
Founded Chris Anderson, 1985
Headquarters Bath, England, UK
Key people Stevie Spring,
Industry Magazine and internet publishing
Employees 1200+
Website http://www.futureplc.com/

Future plc (LSE: FUTR) is an international special-interest media company with offices in London, Bath, San Francisco, New York and Sydney. Future employs more than 1,200 people worldwide, and produces magazines, websites and events in a range of specialist sectors including games, technology, automotive, cycling, films and photography. It publishes more than 100 magazines and attracts over 11 million unique users to its websites.

Contents

[edit] History

Future Publishing was created in 1985 by an unemployed computer journalist, Chris Anderson, working with two colleagues from his house in Somerton, Somerset, England. It began with the publication of Amstrad Action magazine whose success led to the publication of further titles, including 8000 Plus (for the Amstrad PCW) and PC Plus (for PCs). [1] The lively style of writing and incisive, impartial reviews proved very popular, and the company expanded, moving to Bath in the summer of 1987. The company - by now employing two to three dozen staff - was a very early adopter of desktop publishing. The company rapidly expanded over the course of the next ten years, specialising in computing and gaming magazines. During the 1990s it launched many successful and influential titles such as the cerebral games magazine Edge, guide to "Tomorrow's Technology Today" T3 (since evolved into a lifestyle technology magazine) internet title .net and computer design bible Computer Arts. Another long-standing success is multiformat gaming title GamesMaster - launched to accompany the television series of the same name, but going on to outlast it by many years, and remaining the UK's best-selling multiformat games title.

Future enjoyed considerable success by developing specialist magazines targeted at enthusiasts, with both the writers and readers sharing the same commitment and knowledge of the subject matter. This approach hit its zenith with cult gaming title Amiga Power, a magazine that cheerfully attacked its own advertisers and other magazines within Future. Regrettably, if unsurprisingly, this style was not duplicated in other titles, but the company has remained focused on producing specialist titles for narrow audience segments.

Founder Chris Anderson sold his majority stake in the company in 1994, moving to San Francisco to develop GP Publications, a small US magazine company bought by Future in 1993. Future was bought by Pearson New Entertainment Europe. Several successful titles were launched in the following years including Total Film and Playstation: The Official Magazine - the company's biggest success story, becoming the third best-selling men's magazine in the UK - but Pearson struggled to achieve its goals and in 1998 was put up for sale. The company at that time comprised of Future and Freench publisher Edicorp, both of which were acquired in a management buyout by the Future board. Chris Anderson backed the buyout and returned as non-executive chairman.

[edit] Ensuing success

The company expanded rapidly, opening offices or buying existing companies in Germany, Italy and Poland. It entered the US market with the purchase of Imagine Media - the renamed company Anderson developed when he first left Future.

Due to its specialisation in computing and internet titles, the company was an enthusiastic adopter of internet publishing during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, launching numerous websites based around its magazine titles and online-focused magazines such as Internet Works, Business 2.0, and the world's first email magazine Future Gamer. Buoyed by its association with the internet and computing, the company floated on the Stock Exchange in 2000 and the share price rocketed to around £9. The success did not last, with share price and profits crashing as the dot-com bubble burst. The company avoided bankruptcy by a rights issue, large-scale redundancies, the sale of Business 2.0 to AOL Time Warner and the sale or closure of its offices in Germany and Poland.

Following several years of consolidation, Future embarked on a new expansion campaign in 2003, acquiring established companies and individual magazines in the UK, France, and the US including PC Zone, Revolver, and Pregnancy and Baby. The company also launched into the children's market with new licensed magazines for the JETIX television channel, and the official Duel Masters magazine based on the popular trading card game. In 2005 Future bought 38 titles from Highbury House , including Fast Bikes and Fast Car magazine, after the Competition Commission blocked an attempt to buy the company outright, citing a potential monopoly in games magazines.

The company has specialised in producing officially-licenced titles and now produces the official titles for all three major console manufacturers in both the US and the UK. Its customer publishing arm, FuturePlus, also producers content for a number of clients.

[edit] Into the new millennium

With the appointment of a new CEO in 2006, Stevie Spring, the company has embarked on a strategy of focusing on six key themes: focusing on basics, core, geography, partnerships, audience and online.

With this focus, it has sold or closed more than 50 under-performing magazine titles and disposed of its Italian and French operations to concentrate on its English-language offering. Future licenses its magazine content to local publishers in more than 30 international territories and is currently one of the world's biggest exporters of licensed content.

Online, the company has invested and engaged in a rapid expansion of digital activities, most recently with the launches of Techradar.com, a computing and consumer electronics site and Musicradar.com, a site for music-makers.

It has grown its partnership publishing activity through its custom publisher, FuturePlus and its official partnerships with clients including Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sky and BT.

The current CEO of Future PLC is Stevie Spring who took over from Greg Ingham in 2006. The current Chief Executive of Future UK is Robert Price, who took over from Colin Morrison (formerly MD and COO) in 2004. The corporate motto is Media with Passion.

[edit] Key titles

Key magazine titles published by Future Publishing include:

Future also holds the official license for magazines from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo to publish titles such as:

[edit] Key websites

Key online sites published by Future Publishing include:

[edit] Popular defunct titles

[edit] References

  1. ^ Future plc - Company History (28). Retrieved on 2007-12-09.
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Magazines published by Future Publishing

[edit] External links