Ten Future titles up for sale as publisher 'streamlines'

The magazines under consultation include London-based titles acquired as part of a package of 38 that Future bought from Highbury in May last year, including DJ, Total Mobile, Home Entertainment Week and Timecode.
Future purchased 14 puzzle magazines in the Highbury deal, several of which it has already sold, but it said it no longer plans to publish these. The first large-scale overhaul of Future's magazine interests since the arrival of chief executive Stevie Spring in July, is likely to leave the company with just 13 of the former Highbury titles.
Retro Cars and Total BMW, acquired from A&S, are also part of the review, along with Digital Camera Shopper, Practical Web Design, Good Woodworking and performance car magazine J-Tuner, all of which were launched by Future.
The publisher expects to complete the review ahead of its annual results on 28 November.
Closing or selling the titles will result in around 50 redundancies, including five commercial posts, but the company said it was seeking to redeploy staff internally.
Robert Price, Future's UK MD, said the publisher wanted to focus on gaming, music and film, and on developing new products online. It is set to launch technology websites techtested.co.uk and techdaily.co.uk in December.
"We have to put investment where we believe we are strongest," he said. "We want to refocus on digital and cannot do everything at once. We are streamlining our business, and some products have a natural lifecycle."
The group recently announced that pre-tax profits for the year to 30 September would be £3.5m below market expectations, due to continued weakness in both advertising and news-stand sales.
Future recently suspended plans to launch a women's gambling magazine and also published its last edition of Official Xbox Magazine.