All posts tagged: The Spectator

Spectator made £6.6m loss in year Paul Marshall paid £100m for title

Spectator made £6.6m loss in year Paul Marshall paid £100m for title

Published by Sam Flores

The Spectator composite image. Picture: OQS Media The 15-month sale process of The Spectator resulted in total costs to the weekly news magazine of £11.4m. The Spectator was bought by GB News investor and hedge fund manager Sir Paul Marshall via his company Old Queen Street Ventures Ltd in September 2024. In the 2023 financial year, the sale process cost The Spectator £6.4m. New accounts on Companies House now show a further £5m cost in the year to 31 December 2024. These costs included receivers, independent directors, bankers, lawyers, consultants and employee retention payments. They were paid by the prior owners before the OQS acquisition completed. The sale meant The Spectator fell into the red following a pre-tax profit of £2.6m in 2022, its last full year of Barclay family ownership. In 2024, The Spectator reported a pre-tax loss of £6.6m, slightly improved from a loss of £6.9m in 2023. EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation) excluding exceptional items was a small loss of £0.2m following a profit of £1.2m in 2023. Turnover …

Publishers hit back at claim it is ‘open season’ on Muslims in media

Publishers hit back at claim it is ‘open season’ on Muslims in media

Published by Sam Flores

A selection of stories relating to Muslims and Islam published in the Jewish Chronicle, GB News, Telegraph and Spectator Labour MP Imran Hussain said a new analysis of UK online journalism suggests it is “open season” on Muslims in the UK press. But editor of The Spectator Michael Gove, whose publication came in for particular criticism from the report, condemned the exercise as an attempt to shut down free debate. Among the recommendations in the new report are a call for “regulatory consequences” against publishers who are found to exhibit “systematic bias”. Publishers have also questioned the research methodology, which is based on AI-powered analysis of 41,000 articles published in 2025. Hussain was speaking at the parliamentary launch of the State of British Media, an annual analysis by the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), a group established by the Muslim Council of Britain. The report accused right-leaning media outlets in particular of being overwhelmingly negative and negatively biased in their coverage of Islam and Muslims. It was published on the same day (9 March) that …

How The Spectator invested £1m in building own subs platform

How The Spectator invested £1m in building own subs platform

Published by Sam Flores

The Spectator composite image. Picture: OQS Media The Spectator has invested £1m in a new technology platform which it says helped it to an all-time high subscribers total. In 2025, the publisher’s digital subscriptions grew by 4.3% to 47,576 and print sales rose 2.7% to 56,152 giving it a total weekly sale of 103,728 (excluding its Australia and American editions), according to latest ABC figures. It follows the title blaming an 8% drop in turnover to £19.2m largely on “difficulties with a subscription technology platform migration” in 2023. Now, the title has attributed its growth in both print and digital readers to Co-Editor, an in-house subscriptions platform that is now a core part of Spectator owner Old Queen Street Ventures Limited (OQS Media)’s technology stack. It has made the subscriber sign-up process more efficient with an aim to reduce churn. Since Co-Editor launched in June 2025, The Spectator has seen combined print and digital subscribers rise from 94,000 to 103,000. US subscriptions have risen from 14,000 to more than 16,000. The platform also frees up …

New subs technology helps Spectator reach 198-year sales high

New subs technology helps Spectator reach 198-year sales high

Published by Sam Flores

Spectator front page The Spectator was the only current affairs magazine audited by ABC to grow both print and digital sales in 2025 – rising to the highest total sale in its 198-year history. Meanwhile, Private Eye remains the biggest selling UK current affairs title with fortnightly sales of 225,642 (down 3.1% year on year). The Economist remains a global journalism success story with worldwide sales up 1.2% to 981,746. Scroll down for full table listing UK current affairs magazine sales in 2026. Due to changes in ABC regulations, many publications boosted their totals by being allowed to count readers who receive both print and digital editions of publications twice in the overall circulation total. This was not the case for The Spectator (which de-dupes print and digital readers) or The Economist (its 981,746 digital subscriptions total includes those who also receive the print edition). Private Eye does not have a digital edition. Circulations have also been boosted for some titles (not The Spectator or The Economist) by readership on “all you can read” Spotify-style …

News subscriptions prices and offers tracked in 2026

News subscriptions prices and offers tracked in 2026

Published by Sam Flores

Subscriptions pages for the Financial Times, The Telegraph, The Scotsman and Bloomberg Media on 23 January 2026 Digital news subscriptions prices have increased by an average of 3% in the UK for the second year running, according to Press Gazette analysis. However many publications were offering discounts in January of up to 89%, indicating that many consumers may be able to avoid paying the full price. Of 23 publications included in Press Gazette’s dataset both in January 2025 and January 2026, ten increased their annual digital subscription prices in the past year. Six saw no change in annual price and seven reduced the cost of their digital subscription. As a result the average percentage change among these 23 digital news subscriptions was 3%, close to the UK inflation rate of 3.6% (2.7% in the US) over the past 12 months. This contrasts to UK national newspaper cover prices, which were up by an average of 10% in the past year as publishers look to make up for falling newsstand sales and advertising. From January 2024 …