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overview
holdings
landmarks
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overview
This profile considers the Heinrich Bauer media group.
It covers -
introduction
Hamburg-based Heinrich Bauer Verlag, founded in 1875,
is one of Europe's largest consumer magazine publishers,
with some 82 titles worldwide as of 2004. It also publishes
television guides and puzzle titles. Most imprints are
lucrative but editorially undistinguished.
Bauer
has around 10.2% of German magazine sales by volume, with
around 31 titles. As of 2002 its turnover was around €1.78
billion.
It
gained attention outside Europe in 2002 with an unsuccessful
bid for the Kirch television and
film group. In 2007 it agreed to pay In December 2007
it announced that it would pay £1.14 billion for
Emap's consumer magazine unit (inc
titles such as Grazia, Heat and FHM)
and radio arm (inc Magic FM, Kiss 100 and Kerrang!).
It has been moving into eastern Europe, like competitors
such as Axel Springer and
Ringier.
shape
The group is best known for its German and UK television
listings guides, which boast some of the largest EU magazine
circulation figures, for kids magazines and for adult
titles (which formerly included the German edition of
Playboy). Major titles are Auf einen Blick,
TV Movie and TV Hören und Sehen
with around half of the German television listings market.
It publishes general interest, culinary, automobile, mens,
teenage and home magazines in Germany, Poland and the
Czech Republic. These include Bravo, Tina,
Neue Post, Geldidee!, Auto Zeitung
and Das Neue Blatt.
It
expanded into the UK, France and US in the 1980s. Titles
include Real, TV Quick, That's Life!,
Bella and Take a Break. Bauer has expanded
into the US, with six titles. It has four titles in France,
seven in Spain and one in Portugal.
Bauer's eastern European presence includes 12 titles in
its Poland, four in Hungary (through a joint venture with
Ringier) and two in Romania.
The Czech Chvilka Pro Tebe is promoted as
a
magazine for competitive readers, featuring crosswords
on every page with the opportunity to win attractive
prizes of up to CZK 250,000 and a car.
Bauer
holds 25% of Radio Hamburg. It has a 32.2% stake in RTL2,
the German sister channel of commercial television broadcaster
RTL.
Kirch
The
Kirch group encompassed film/video production and distribution,
cable television and global rights trading (notably though
a US$1.54 billion Formula 1 deal). It operated five free-to-air
television channels in Germany (SAT.1, ProSieben, Kabel
1, Deutsches SportFernsehen DSF and the news channel N24)
and had stakes in Berlusconi-controlled
Telecinco (Spain) and Mediaset (Italy). Its feature film,
TV film, series, sport and documentary library contained
around 63,000 hours of fiction footage.
In February 2002 Kirch's pay tv arm Premiere was reported
as losing £1m per day, with upcoming expenditure
of £1.8bn in film deals and programming costs over
four years to 2006 plus rights for the German football
league costing a further £336m up to 2004. Overall
group indebtedness was around £5.3 billion. Murdoch-controlled
BSkyB had exercised a put option, requiring Kirch to buy
back its 22% of Premiere (acquired 1999) for £1.1
billion.
During mid 2002 the money - or merely the patience of
its bankers and partners such as Murdoch - ran out. Kirch
PayTV announced its insolvency in April, followed by parent
KirchMedia and other units.
In November 2002 Bauer announced an 'in principle' agreement
by major German to take over much of Kirch's operations.
Given opposition by regulators that takeover did not,
however, proceed.
Saban
gained control of ProSiebenSat and other assets for £915m
in August 2003. Deutsche Bank gained Kirch's 40% stake
in Axel Springer at that time for US$653 million (in lieu
of an outstanding US$725 million loan to Kirch).
studies
There are no major English-language studies of Bauer.
Mit Politik und Porno: Pressefreiheit als Geschäft
belegt am Heinrich Bauer Verlag (Cologne: Bund Verlag
1984) by Hans Dieter Baroth, Erdmute Beha & Henryk
Broder offers a dour view of Bauer.
The regulatory environment is analysed in Peter Humphreys'
Media and Media Policy in Germany: Press & Broadcasting
since 1945 (Oxford: Berg 1994) and Pluralism, Politics
& the Marketplace: the Regulation of German Broadcasting
(London: Routledge 1991) by Vincent Porter & Suzanne
Hasselbach.
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