Trinity Mirror has closed glossy lifestyle magazine Living in the Midlands to bankroll its response to a rival free newspaper which is expected to be launched next week in Birmingham by entrepreneur Chris Bullivant, TheBusinessDesk West Midlands reports today.
TheBusinessDesk says that Trinity's BPM subsidiary, the publisher of Living, confirmed that the monthly title will be suspended to free-up resources to fight the launch by Bullivant. BPM also publishes the Birmingham Mail, the Coventry Telegraph and the Birmingham Post.
Bullivant was behind the launch of Europe's first free daily, the Daily News, in Birmingham in 1984. Speaking to TheBusinessDesk last month, he said his new newspaper would be a ‘quasi-paid-for’ title, with a core sale of around 5,000 supplemented by 20,000 copies delivered to upmarket suburbs like Harborne and Moseley.
Bullivant said he was aiming to fill a gap that had opened up since the Birmingham Post had changed from daily to weekly publishing, and a market that was missed by the ‘downmarket’ Birmingham Mail.
BPM managing director John Griffith would not confirm whether the company's response to Bullivant would be a beefed-up version of BPM’s existing weekly free newspaper, the Mail Extra, or a new title. He told TheBusinessDesk: “The closure of Living allows us to redeploy resources to protect our position in the Birmingham market."
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