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Wegener puts ‘Digital First’
Wednesday, 15 February 2012 – Koninklijke Wegener N.V. (‘Wegener), the Netherlands’ leading regional media publisher, and part of Mecom Group plc (‘Mecom’), today announces a comprehensive and wide-reaching strategy to accelerate its transformation into a modern media company.
‘Digital First’ is the result of a detailed analysis of Wegener’s entire business by its management team.
The ‘Digital First’ plan is designed to address the significant challenges facing all media companies and to deliver sustainable future growth by capturing the opportunities available to Wegener’s business in the Netherlands from its strong subscriber base and deep community relationships.
Wegener will implement an integrated digital media portfolio by 12th December 2012
(’12 12 12’), offering news and information, insight and comment, on any screen or any device our readers choose.
The portfolio will have at is core a pay approach, including paid apps for smartphones and tablets and exploratory approaches to pay on news websites, fully integrated with Wegener daily regional newspapers.
The key elements of the strategy are:
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Digital First – a focus of investment in the pay model across all digital platforms, including the launch of iPad apps for all daily titles from 31st March, smartphone apps, refreshed websites. We will also extend our offering to other platforms, including Android and HTML5.
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Continued commitment to print – flexibility of offer to maximise potential of each medium and to meet customer needs.
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Cost reductions - a c.€50 million reduction in Wegener’s cost base from
2012-2014, including a headcount reduction in 2012 of between 300 and 350 jobs, across all functions.
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Simplified management structure and a new Publishing Board.
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Modernise sales and marketing, to deliver more efficient and effective
cross-company performance and improve service to advertisers and customers and share best practices from Mecom’s experiences in other markets.
Today’s announcement follows Wegener’s interim management statement of 12th January 2012 in which it said it would consolidate its digital strategy and lower its cost base in view of an expected further decline in advertising revenue this year and continued challenging economic conditions.
The cost reductions announced today form part of the €70 million cost reductions between 2011 and 2014 targeted by Mecom and announced in its strategy presentation of 24th January 2012. Restructuring charges and net profit benefits arising from the measures announced today are also included in those announced by Mecom.
Truls Velgaard, Mecom Netherlands CEO, said, “We are accelerating our digital strategy across the entire company to meet the challenges and capture the opportunities created by unprecedented industry change. Our deep relationship with our readers and advertisers and the skill, determination and energy of our people, give us an unrivalled advantage in this rapidly evolving environment.
“We shall focus on digital, without sacrificing our commitment to our core print titles. This will, however, mean a fundamental change in the way we work, with more cross-company and country initiatives, sharing best practices and modern editorial and sales workflows.
“Wegener has been a benchmark for quality in Dutch journalism for more than 100 years. I am convinced that if we deliver this strategy successfully to our readers and advertisers, our best years lie ahead.”
Tom Toumazis, Mecom CEO, said, “Today’s announcement is entirely aligned with our goal of providing greater commercial focus across our organisation through a commitment to paid platforms. We should stand for being a progressive, flexible and fast moving media company capable of adapting to the changes in audience behaviour, market developments, technology and competition. Our business in the Netherlands is a fundamental part of that.”
Apeldoorn, The Netherlands, 15 February 2012
Wegener Management Board
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