Guido has been critical of The Telegraph’s direction, receiving plenty of emails from unhappy former readers about it. So it is only fair to report that the Telegraph Media Group (TMG) has seen profits rise and claims online subscriptions have reached a record 740,000 paying subscribers, generating a 25% rise in pre-exceptional operating profits. They say that online subscriptions are generating £44 million in revenue which they claim gives “blended average revenue per subscription (ARPS) for December 2021” of £175. Which is triple what Guido gets (£59.45) from dividing £44 million by 740,000 paying subscribers. So either Guido is missing something or the figures don’t compute, particularly as everybody Guido knows is on the £1 subscription deal. Perhaps The Telegraph’s energetic* PR could call to explain?
It is noticeable that this all coincides with the bloody end of the Grazia era at the Telegraph. First the Telegraph Magazine editor, Marianne Jones, and her deputy Lucy Dunn, both went off with stress after falling out with editor Chris Evans last year, and never came back. Then “Director of Lifestyle” Jane Bruton herself popped out for coffee one day and never returned – not fired as her lawyers insisted unconvincingly to Guido (there was no leaving party either, a shocked newsroom source told Guido). Then Features Director Vicki Harper also went off with something stress-related at the same time as Jane, formally leaving the company last week (presumably after coming to some financial agreement with TMG). The question a lot of people are asking is: why were they ever hired in the first place? It appears, seven years later, Chris Evans came to the same conclusion.
