Tuesday 14 December 2010

Timeline of IPC Media

Development of digital media 

Date
Event
Details
1982
Magazines start to use electronic mail and online noticeboards
Acorn User (Addison-Wesley) uses Dialcom/Telecom Gold, a subscription-based email system
1982
Cover disc - vinyl
Your Computer (December) 33.3 rpm vinyl single holding Sinclair ZX81 games
1982
Publishers start to use computer networks
Acorn User and contract publisher Redwood throws out all typewriters and introduces Econet sysyem based on Acorn BBC Micro technology. Copy written on networked BBC terminals, stored on floppy discs or 5MB network hard drive and printed on centralised daisywheel or dot matrix printers to be sent to typesetters. Redwood continued to use the system - which grew to about 80 terminals - before switching to Macintoshes running Quark XPress
1983
Subscription-based online bulletin boards using viewdata systems (broadcast by TV stations or over telephone lines)


Emap launches Micronet, which reaches 1m subscribers. Magazines and individuals set up their own pages using Prestel

Thousands of computer users run own boards from home, office or school using BBC Micros, modems and phone lines


Schools in the Outer Hebrides on the west coast of Scotland had access to a dedicated viewdata system in 1984
1986
BBC attempts to establish a standard for interactive video discs
Domesday system with Philips Laservision disc player - using double-sided, 12-inch optical discs - controlled by a BBC Micro
1980s
Development of digital technologies for handling typesetting and image manipulation
Apple Macintosh (1984)
Postscript from Adobe Systems (1984)
Apple Laser Writer printer (1985)
Aldus Pagemaker (1985)
ISO defines SGML (1986)
Adobe Illustrator (1987)
Quark Xpress (1987)
Adobe PhotoShop (1989)

1992

Adobe Acrobat PDFs
1993
11 November: Guardian article about the World Wide Web
The Guardian's Computer section (p19) carries an article 'The world in a web' by Joe Levy of Edinburgh university describing the World Wide Web project at CERN. The article gives a Telenet address for information and an FTP address for the Mosiac browser at NCSA.
1994
Newspapers move to the web
Daily Telegraph claims to be the first national newspaper on the web


The Unzip CD-Rom from IPC and software developer Zone UK was based on content from New Musical Express, Vox and New Scientist in 1995. It cost £15.99 (for the PC or Mac) and had a target circulation of 20,000. Only one edition was published with the CD-Rom lacking the depth (and cheapness) of a printed magazine, the visual quality of TV or the excitement of a computer game
1995
CD-Rom magazines
At least 10 available (Baumann 1995). Blender (a US title distributed by Dennis in the UK at £9.99 based around samples of US bands and film trailers); Unzip, 'the UK's first fully interactive magazine on CD-Rom' (IPC)

CD-Rom cover mounts on non-computer magazines
August issue of men's monthly Maxim (Dennis Publishing)

Websites for mainstream magazines
Uploaded.com (Loaded, IPC); nme.com (New Musical Express, IPC)
1996
Electronic auditing
ABC Electronic established to provide independent certification for data related to electronic media


X-Net was bi-monthly, which came with a CD-Rom and a cover price of £7.95 for 100 pages. It featured popular pin-up Jo Guest and carried hundreds of addresses for pornographic as well as sport, comedy and car websites. The CD-Rom held more than 300 links to websites and used the sales line: 'Babe Fest! Interview the girls, then watch them strip.' It caused a furore, to which its editor, Dominic Handy, responded in the Guardian: 'We did not go out to publish a porn mag, we wanted to publish Loaded for the internet.'
1997
Digital kiosks
BT Touchpoint with NME, Loaded and Marie Claire content


Improving technology meant CD-Rom titles could market themselves based on their video content. Among the publishers to exploit this development were those behind top-shelf titles such as Enter
1998
Sunday Times CD-ROM covermount
Windows on the World is an educational CD-Rom produced with the British National Space Centre
1999
BRAD (Nov) directory lists 668 entries under 'new media'


Nuvo Media's Rocket e-Book
Portable e-book device for $300 that held about 4,000 ages (10 books). Owners could buy copyrighted digital versions of books and journals
2000
CD-Rom magazines based on video content
Enter monthly from Pure Communications. Lads' mags with advertising from Toyota, Heineken, Mars and Jameson whiskey



Company predicts in a timeline on its website (dated September 13 1999) and in advertising that a 'slate form' Tablet PC would be a mainstream device by 2004; that eNewstands would 'proliferate on street corners' by 2006; by 2008 ebook titles would 'begin to outsell conventional volumes in most counties'; two years later companies would be giving away ebook devices; and by 2020, the primary dictionary definition of a book would be writing displayed on a computer. Barnes & Noble.com and Microsoft open eBookStore for Microsoft Reader (www.bn.com). Michael Crichton's Timeline was free to download. Other promoted books for sale included Lethal Seduction by Jackie Collins, Married to Laughter by Jerry Stiller and Deadly Decisions by Kathy Reichs. Online magazine Salon was sceptical. The Microsoft timeline pages were taken down by 2001
2001
Digital facsimile editions of newspapers start to appear
'Flat PDFs' with no interactivity

US software developer Zinio founded

2003
SMS text messaging
Loaded (IPC)

Online media have become mainstream: BRAD (Jun) no longer lists websites separately


Sunday Times CD-Rom supplement
The Month CD-Rom is based on entertainment and arts content.It was sponsored by Renault for a reported £250,000. The first time the disc was loaded, a 40-second Renault advery was shown. After that, users could skip the ad half way through. Commercial dealsincluded a website with MVC where users could order reviewed CDs and a link to Warner Village's website t book tickets online
2005
Financial Times launches digital facsimile edition
Includes How to Spend It

Digital paper announced

2006
Switch in teenage spending to online and mobile-phone-based media blamed for teen magazine closures
Emap closes Smash Hits. The name lives on as a digital music TV channel and radio station, online and as a mobile phone service

Digital (facsimile) magazines
Exact Editions launches first titles (Feb). Quickly expanded to include Dazed & Confused

Downloadable magazines for phones
Time Out, OK!, Glamour, GQ on Mobizine platform (Feb)

Magazines launch on YouTube
Condé Nast puts Glamour, GQ and Vogue on YouTube

YouTube seen as affecting (men's) magazines
Unloaded, and now the party is over,’ (Brown, 2006)

Magazines use YouTube for marketing
Nuts men's weekly (IPC) celebrates sales results with a raunchy ad on YouTube

Temporary video websites exploiting social networking
Zootube.co.uk for Emap's Zoo men's weekly

TV magazines cover online films and podcasts
Radio Times covers YouTube, iFilm and Google Video on radiotimes.com and in magazine
Interactive digital-only magazines launched
Monkey from Dennis. 'The world’s first weekly digital men’s magazine' (Nov)

Media organisations launch special editions in Second Life online world
US technology title Wired (October); German tabloid Bild (December); Sky News (May 2007); CNET, Reuters, BBC Radio 1 and Channel 4 Radio (Green 2007)
2007
TV guide revamps website to help find shows on the web for downloading
Radio Times

First ABCe figures for digital -only and print magazines
Monkey releases ABCe of 209,612 copies a week



Digital-only magazine for teenagers
National Magazines launches Jellyfish as a trial using Ceros technology. The magazine's motto was 'if it moves, click.' However, problems with the emailed files being blocked because of poor mailing lists led to the experiment failing and it was closed within 6 months.

Contract publishers seek ABCe audits for digital titles
River Publishing registers Healthy for Men with ABCe (May)

Advertising revenue rising but 'no one has got the business model for online cracked yet,' Stevie Spring (chief executive, Future Publishing)


'[Newspapers] have yet to find sound monetisation models' (Richard Stephenson, chairman of Yudu Media, quoted by Kirby 2007)


Magazines move into digital TV
Nuts TV channel based on the weekly IPC men's magazine (September)

Free weekly men's magazine launched with website
ShortList gives away 500,000 copies. 'Our site is completely central to everything we're planning' Mike Soutar, quoted in Dorrell, 2007

Online digital facsimile newsagents launched
MyMag Online in Ireland

DVD magazine announced
'The world's first' magazine on DVD from Expansive Media (for November launch)

Publishers working with digital paper
E-Ink working with Time magazine (Moses)
2008
Digital magazines becoming an established medium
Exact Editions has about 70 titles; Ceros 200. In February 2008, Zinio launches Global Newsstand to make 850 titles available to buy and read online

Brand expansion for Monkey
Dennis Publishing and mobile media company Player X launch Monkey as a free mobile TV channel (March)

Dennis builds on Monkey business model
Dennis launches fortnightly iMotor and Gizmo

Monthly car launch
Motor Play launches as a free digital car monthly ‘with over 200 pages of beautifully produced articles on cars’

Social applications and widgets for Stuff website
Umee develops utilities such as Twitter, Facebook and Clearspring widgets for Haymarket's Stuff.tv

Wallpaper widget
News feed and a photo of the day from monthly design title
2009


IPC's music weekly sells 59p app to access band photographs using Umee technology. Rebrands itelf as: online, magazine, TV, radio, mobile (note the order)
2010
February: Dennis closes monthly motoring emag iMotor
Company blames e-mag's lack of success on the economic downturn and that it had 'found it hard to convince manufacturers to make full use of the creative environment that a digital magazine offers'. Monkey and iGizmo not affected

May: Apple launches the iPad in the UK. Claims 300,000 sales on the first day.
Newspapers and magazines such as Wired, The Spectator and the Financial Times release iPad apps to read their stories in a format that tries to mimic the printed page. The FT wins 'best iPad app' award for its free offering, which is downloaded 150,000 time in 3 weeks; the August edition of Press Gazette gave the total as 250,000 (p6). iPad screen is 9.7 inches diagonally, compared with the iPhone's 3.5in

May: VW releases free customer magazine as iPad app
DAS (Digital Automotive Space) also set up as a website in June. The plan was to publish the app quarterly in five languages across Europe

August: Dazed & Confused released as free app for Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch
Dazed co-founder Jefferson Hack said: 'From fold out poster to iPad app, Dazed has come a long way since its birth almost two decades ago. With the new app, a whole new audience of culturally aware iPad and iPhone users will be introduced to Dazed.' The digital magazine was based on Exact Editions Precisely platform

September iPad 'changing the rules of digital publishing'
A report on the Yudu website suggested people were spending far more time browsing the iPad app for GQ and Vanity Fair than they were the websites (from 2-4 minutes a month to 60)

Segmentation of digital publishing strategies
Another problem is Apple's control of the iPhone / iPad customer and the potential for publishers to earn revenue from digital subscriptions and digital advertising.

Wired iPad app sales plummet
Sales fall from 100,000 in June to about 28,000 in August for the Adobe-based app

Poll on magazine reading/browsing in 2020
Exact Editions ran an online survey in October 2010 asking people's opinions about their future reading habits, How will we read magazines? See poll results.

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