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Time Out: cutting jobs as it refocuses on digital
Time Out: cutting jobs as it refocuses on digital
Time Out: cutting jobs as it refocuses on digital

Time Out to cut about 40 staff in UK and US

This article is more than 8 years old

Listings title aims to focus on digital as it becomes a global multimedia business

Time Out is to cut about 40 staff at its UK and US operations as part of a strategic refocus of the listings magazine into a global multimedia business.

The group, which has expanded its brand into 107 cities across 38 countries, is thought to be cutting about 10% of its estimated 400 global workforce.

“We continue to transform the Time Out Group from a traditional media company to a global multimedia business to take advantage of the new landscape,” said a spokeswoman for publisher. “As a result of this transformation and to reflect the new mix of skills required by the business, a number of jobs in our UK and US teams will be impacted, and some jobs will sadly be lost. The exact number of impacted roles and job losses are currently being finalised as we work through this news with our staff.”

Time Out Group, which claims a global reach of 95 million monthly users across print and digital platforms, is aiming to drive a greater proportion of its revenues from digital sales.

“We will continue to invest in the areas of the business that will drive the future growth of the company and become a global commerce platform in the key vertical categories,” said the spokeswoman.

The redundancies follow last month’s move to take over the franchise responsible for publishing Time Out magazines and guides in Portugal for the past eight years.

“As part of our commitment to global expansion we recently acquired our franchise in Portugal. Time Out is a hugely popular brand in Portugal, so we are delighted to be adding the likes of Lisbon and Porto to the Time Out Group and will be launching them on the global digital and mobile platform,” said the spokeswoman.

In February, Time Out Group appointed Noel Penzer, managing director of AOL UK, as managing director of its European operation.

The appointment of a senior AOL executive formed part of a strategy to focus on Time Out’s “three pillars” of content, programmatic advertising and video.

He initially reported to Tim Arthur, editor-in-chief turned Time Out Group chief executive, who left the business in the summer.

Arthur had stepped up to replace Aksel van der Wal, the former finance chief at Vodafone who advised on the sale of Time Out founder Tony Elliott’s business to private equity group Oakley in 2010 and left in 2013.

In September, Penzer was promoted to chief executive and Julio Bruno, a former senior executive at TripAdvisor, was appointed as executive chairman.

Time Out’s flagship London edition was relaunched as a free title in 2012.

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