Competition puts 'RTE Guide' under pressure: Did RTÉ management miss the boat by not selling the RTÉ Guide back in early 2002?
At the time, RTÉ was making all sorts of dire noises about selling non-core assets to help address its dwindling income position. As everyone knows the Minister for Communications, Dermot Ahern, eventually came to the rescue and increased the licence fee to €150.
All talk of selling non-core assets ended - at least in public. Since then the Guide has become part of an RTÉ division known as RTÉ Publishing.
According to RTÉ's 2003 annual report, this division produced a small surplus that year. While it brought in €11.63 million in advertising, sponsorship and circulation income, costs totalled €11.61 million.
For the last year, sterling work has been done at the publishing division by executive director Múirne Laffan. She has steadfastly refused to cut the magazine's cover price despite the antics of others and has focused on keeping it very much a family title.
But what kind of future does the magazine have? The remorseless competition from newspapers, especially at weekends, has put the RTÉ Guide under severe pressure. Sky's magazine, while it is given free to subscribers, is making the purchase of the RTÉ Guide increasingly unnecessary. The competition does not end there. TV Now, from publisher Michael O'Doherty, is also maintaining its popularity, especially in urban areas.
All of this means the circulation of the RTÉ Guide can only go one way. It also means the kind of valuations put on the title back in the dark days of 2002 are unlikely to be available again even if director-general Cathal Goan does want to sell the title now.
Waterford Wedgwood feels more pain: You would have thought Waterford Wedgwood would have had enough problems as it struggles to increase sales. Apparently, its situation is not troubling it enough to risk upsetting some of its existing customers.
This week New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer announced a settlement with the Irish company and others over what his office said was a conspiracy to stop lower-cost retailers stocking some of its luxury brands.
Waterford Wedgwood will have to pay $500,000 (€408,497) in penalties as part of a $2.9 million settlement.
According to Mr Spitzer's investigation, the company acceded to pressure from two of the US's highest profile retailers - including the parent of New York's famous Macy's and Bloomingdales stores - not to supply certain popular lines to Bed, Bath & Beyond, a less prestigious retailer.
The company presumably hoped the higher prices it could charge for the lines stocked exclusively by existing retailers would offset the money to be made by tapping into a wider market.
Unfortunately, the move fell foul of New York competition law and the Waterford firm will not face a further charge on its books this year.
Coming just after the sale of its US All-Clad subsidiary - once seen as the driver of future profit growth but ultimately sacrificed to the need to pay down debt - and the continued weakness of the dollar in 2004, the episode can only add to the company's pain in one of its key markets.
Fledgling questions: Ryanair's Michael O'Leary was told off in his own back yard this week by a senior executive of rival Germanwings.
The Irish airline boss is more accustomed to doing the talking, especially when it's at the expense of other players in the sector but that did not faze Andreas Bierwirth, deputy managing director of the fledgling German operator.
He strongly questioned Ryanair's strategy in Germany and said the airline was getting in "more and more trouble" in that market.
"They are getting into problems in Germany, flying nowhere to nowhere, Germans don't like it, particularly German business people who are the ones paying the high yields," he said.
He said Ryanair was making a strategic mistake by focusing on Frankfurt Hahn.
On a more serious note, with rising fuel prices the Ryanair boss might respect the German airlines foresight in hedging 90 per cent of its fuel requirements to the end of the year.
