@ DJINN - great insight. I too agree that Drum limited the readership by appealing to high society (who is interested in how an ambassador's wife spends her day?).

As the income reduced from lower sales consider the increased operating costs incurred for glossier and thicker pages, higher salaries due to promotions, et al.

I wonder who the failure can be pinned on... Would it be the local management (Carol Mandi and her team) for poor strategy or 24 Media? Food for thought.

@mukiha, quite insightful.

Why did the closure come so soon after NMG was kicked/bought out? were they so vital...or could the magazines 'comeback' under fully owned NMG subsidiary?

Anyway I miss the Nightnurse and the casanova diaries..he could teach @magigi 1 or 2 things..

I'm impressed by the insights behind Kusadikika's and Mukiha's posts (never mind if they don't agree), but I beleive that other than the reasons that Mukiha is going to dig up for our benefit, majority of the target market for the same magazines (well off college guys, the middle and upper income working class, etc) have so much access to info on the net (such ah this site) that there's really no point of buying a magazine for stale news!

Case in point - most of us read the story of Eric Wainaina's infidelity in a blog, spread the news on FB and other blogs ( e.g. Wazua) and before long everyone knew the whole story. If a magazine interviews Eric Wainaina after the whole debacle intending to publish the aftermath, insiders will tell the storo to a friend and before long the rumour mill will be on the net and the cycle continues!

We have to face the fact that technology has become so advanced, so cheap and so accessible that info on magazines is now just for keeps! One of the pastors at Mavuno gave a classic example - in our days, getting a porn VHS tape was like finding pink diamonds. Now, free porn is on the internet at the touch of a button and even kids in prima have internet enabled phones! So EAM folding up is no surprise, a shame by no means, but no surprise.

Adapt or die! Not only in business - even in your workplace!

P.S. Guess how I found out that EAM is/might be folding up? You guessed it!

The print media as a whole is in a declining phase, most of the management in the print media are of an older generation and are having a hard time coming to terms with the rise of web content. This new monster "Web" has brought new challenges to print media. These traditionaly all print companies have to come up with web content business models that are sustainable over the long term and can generate revenue.

Today people are quickly getting what they would traditionaly get from print publication on the web and at almost no cost. Plus you get video and sound and no clutter(paper)

Now are you likely to go out there and buy a magazine? The last few times I have bought magazines, it has sorely been to collect for sentimental value.

Excerpts by: Helge Rønning, Professor, Department of media and communication, University of Oslo.

As of now the most important communication media in Africa are radios and cell phones. Radio usage and radio stations have like mobile telephony witnessed a remarkable growth in the last decade. Radios are becoming common in poor rural areas and new radio stations in the form of private commercial broadcasters and local community radios are spreading fast and provide alternative voices and perspectives to, in many cases, staid and authoritarian state broadcasters. Both radios and mobile phones are communication media that are cheap and flexible. They do not need permanent electricity supply, and the still substantial illiterate sections of the population can use them. As regards media use in general Africa is still a communication poor continent. This is the case for print media. Newspapers are an elite and urban phenomenon. Book reading is not widespread outside educational contexts. Television is largely an urban medium.

The Internet is even in South Africa used by only 11.6 percent of the population. Only 5.3 percent of the total African population has access to the Net. [5] The countries with more than 10 percent Internet penetration were Algeria (10.4), Egypt (10.5), Mauritius (26.7), Morocco (21.3), Reunion (FR) (27.4), São Tomé & Principé (11.2), Seychelles (38.9) and South Africa 11.6). Twenty-two countries had an Internet penetration rate of less than 2 percent. Patterns of unequal distribution are equally evident for mobile phones, where mobile penetration is highest in South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, which all except for Egypt had a penetration of over 50 percent in 2007 – a little less than the double of the continental average.

I still do not think internet and blogs are the reason why this publications are folding though Kusadikika may be onto something when he talked about a lack of multi - faceted revenue stream.

In my opinion we lack critical thinkers in majority of our sectors and in this particular case it becomes an uphill task to maintain readership.Until we challenge the norm and stop using "retreads" then we will continue reading this stories.
I am appalled at an advert in Supersport that depicts a man in Angola in 2037 talking bout how the world cup was in Africa and from where he seated to me does not depict 2037...surely what were you guys smoking!!!

Interesting Read.

There used to be a copy of the business daily in our office, i read it faithfully until i stumbled on stockskenya. and forgot about Business daily. More relevant discussions, and interactive. The power of new medias. They cannot be ignored in the new age, and will eventually lead to diminished returns for the hard copy publishing industry. Imagine a magazine doing a story of makmende at this time, would it not be a blend of archers blog and makmende.com?

Mukiha is right, newspaper/magazine sales contribute to a very small fraction of the revenues. Nation advertises that it has 1m readers, the actual figures for the copies sold are somewhere between 100K to 200K copies sold per day. KQ's msafiri magazine is free but generates higher (if not highest) revenue figures in the magazine industry locally.

I never bought drum/True Love primarily because i did not find the stories all that relevant. In fact, i would rather buy a novel rather than either of the two. Clearly wasnt in their target market. I however liked the quality of the production.

i never bought them because i thought they were above my price range. I used to like drum until they hiked the price. So i just go to the salon and read all the copies back to back as i get my hair done.

Hmmn since the topic is still here, just thought to share on the credentials of East Africa Magazines, the company that owns Drum and True Love.

East Africa Magazines was part of Media24 publishing almost 60 titles in 5.9 million magazines monthly with readership of 8.7 million people. If you were in SA, you'd know of their very popular 24.com with news24.com, fin24.com, sport24.com etc. In Mar 2009 they had turnover of Kes70b with net profit of Kes3.25b

But Media24 is wholly owned by Naspers - a leading multinational media group listed on the Johanesburg Stock Exchange. So What's interesting is in Kenya, Naspers owns Multichoice and kalahari.co.ke



So for EAst Africa Magazines, I guestimate they put in Kes 113 mil for 49% stake and sales in 2008 were Kes45mil dropping to Kes24mil in 2009 estimating from sale of goods to related party 2009/2008. Definitely not enough to live on!

http://www.welkomyizani....nacialStatement2009.pdf

Out of interest for you investors, an investment in Naspers at the JSE in May 08 ~16,500R price would yield a 100% return currently valued at ~32,340 price Apr 10.

Just curious ....any relation with our Muganda who incidentally seems to have much interest on the thread?