Future Network Reorganizes, Forms 3 New Pub Divisions

Foliomag.com (Oct. 11, 2005)

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

By DYLAN STABLEFORD

Future Network USA, a niche and trade publisher of action sports, computing, gaming and musician magazines, today announced a major staff reorganization and the creation of three publishing divisions—Youth, Music & Tech and Living—in the hopes of creating synergies across all three.

Future’s newly-formed Youth group—comprised of games and actions sports titles including including Official Xbox Magazine, PSM: 100% Independent PlayStation 2 Magazine, PC Gamer, Future Snowboarding, The Snowboard Journal, Skateboard Trade News, Snowboard Trade News and Skateboarding Buyer’s Guide, will be headed by Simon Whitcombe, Future’s current Games group director. Its gaming titles represent about $20 million in annual ad revenue.

Future’s publishing assets have a combined circulation of over 2.2 million.

Music publishing director Steve Aaron will oversee the addition of Maximum PC and MacAddict to its Music & Tech group—with Guitar World, Guitar One, Future Music, Guitar World Acoustic, Guitar World Bass and Guitar World Legends comprising the bulk of the division’s titles.

The Living group will include Scrapbook Answers and recently acquired Highbury titles Women’s Health & Fitness, Do!, Decorating Spaces and Pregnancy. Kathleen Reilly was named as associate publisher of Scrapbook Answers, where she also served as the marketing manager behind the launch.

Other personnel shifts at Future include Games group publisher Andy Swanson moving to the newly-formed head of sales post for the group; Official Xbox Magazine (OXM) editor-in-chief Rob Smith shifting to associate publisher; and PC Gamer editor-in-chief Dan Morris becoming the magazine’s associate publisher.