The Outlook Group has pulled the plug on three of its licensed international titles: People, Geo and Marie Claire, choosing not to renew licenses that were up, BestMediaInfo reported on Friday. Marie Claire was being published in partnership with French publisher Groupe Marie Claire, People magazine was licensed from Time Inc., while Geo was licensed from Gruner + Jahr (G+J) International, a part of the Bertelsmann group. It's worth noting that, two years ago, G+J had acquired a majority stake in custom publisher Maxposure, so it does have a magazine presence in India to relaunch Geo with. There appear to be contradictory statements on the reasons for the closure of these magazines. Indranil Roy, President for the Outlook Group told BestMediaInfo that "It has nothing to do with profitability. It’s our business call not to continue with the titles", while Vinod Mehta, Editorial chairman of the group, told BusinessWorld that the three magazines were losing money because of the huge licensing fees for these three "white elephants" being paid to the foreign title holders. Outlook has reiterated that this doesn't impact the other Outlook Group magazines, and Roy has denied that the group is being acquired by Network18. We find it surprising that the Network18 rumor even surfaced, since the Network18 group appears to focusing only on television and digital. What's In It For The Brand To Keep The Publication Running? The decision to keep licensed brands running are eventually only going to be driven by the ability to sell…
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