Time Out’s audience is young, connected, impulsive, and on the move.
These are the typical conversations you hear: “Let’s meet up in Haggerston. What’s a hot bar there?”
“I was going to see the new Star Wars movie tonight. But Time Out gives it a crap review. Let’s do something else. Is the ice rink at Somerset House still going?”
That’s how people use Time Out. Their plans are fluid and ever-shifting. They’ll cross London more than once in the evening to try something new. And they’re rammed on the tube or bus. Mobile Time Out is what they need.
But it’s a demanding audience. The content has to be easy to consume, informative and actionable. If you like the sound of something, you want to know more and maybe buy tickets – immediately.
But first, some history. Like many, I suspect, I fell out of love with Time Out in a gradual way. Work, children and well, the ageing process, meant that I used London less and so I bought it less frequently.
You could also find most of the stuff you wanted online easily. Just as the web wiped out classified advertising, so it rendered Time Out’s entertainment listings less useful.
But it also seemed that Time Out had lost its way editorially. More and more of the magazine was given over to ‘shopping’ pages. I understood why – it offered the title the chance to tap into a more lucrative advertising base but it was no longer about London. Why pay £3.25 for listings I could get online and consumerism I could get somewhere else for free (and often better) and which I didn’t want anyway?
In a nutshell, it felt like Time Out had fallen out of love with the capital.
So, in what seemed like an act of desperation, it went free in 2012.
And it’s worked. Circulation has risen from an anaemic 50,000 to 308,000. Better than that, it’s rediscovered its editorial mojo. It sees London the way I do: a vast, sprawling, decentralised, diversified metropolis with a huge choice of entertainments, exhibitions and places to eat and drink. It reflects the energy of the capital (and its residents), its joie de vivre and sheer quirkiness.
It celebrates Shepherds Bush with the same enthusiasm as the West End. Like its audience, it’s funny, smart and on-the-button.
Distribution of Time Out in print is on Tuesdays. I normally pick up my copy outside Waterloo, but I can get it at any central London tube station also. But it goes off circulation the same day. If I don’t pick up the print copy on Tuesday, that’s it.
Which is where the digital iterations come in, and as wi-fi on the tube becomes accessible, so they will become more important.
The website is friendly enough – you just scroll down, but it’s clunky compared to the free Time Out for London app. The latter essentially is a curation job, divided into discrete areas and updated regularly: Scroll up and down to find ideas: ‘Top Things To Do This Week’; ‘Latest Theatre’; ‘Just-announced Gigs’; ‘Unmissable Films Out Now’; ‘Hottest Bars’, and so on.
On a miserable January Sunday, the cinema or an indoor event seemed like a good idea. No Star Wars for me, so what else was on? The Elvis show at the O2 looked interesting. So did the film Joy. The Time Out review was lukewarm about Elvis, positive about Joy. And so was a user review. The location-based options showed Richmond Curzon was close. Tap the screen and directions appeared.
I couldn’t book off the screen, which was less than perfect. But booking options are available for most of the other activities, from restaurants to theatre, events and gigs. The Potato Project in Soho sounds charmingly bonkers, and at the bottom of the screen is the Uber button (you can sort by distance) to take me there.
For me, this is what Time Out is about. Information (where else could you find out about a café called London Cat Village?), inspiration and activation.
It’s a smooth and simple process, or as they increasingly say, ‘frictionless’.
But I’m a big fan of the Time Out editorial too, and this app doesn’t do that. To access the latest issue, effectively a simple page turner of the print title, you need a different one. At £2.29 for the current issue (£0.79 for old ones, or £26.99 for a year) it feels a little pricey, but I enjoy the editorial as much as I find the listings, reviews and new things to do useful. So the magazine app, although I don’t go for it every week, is reasonable.
It’s presented magazine style, so my favourite departments are easy to access: ‘Great Bits of London’ (Golders Green in the issue I’m reviewing); ‘Local Lies to Tell Tourists’; and my favourite, ‘Word on the Street’, essentially a collection of idiotic / daft things you overhear when you’re roaming around London (sample: “I never leave Walthamstow. It’s like a posh prison”).
Navigation is straightforward – you just swipe left – and but it’s not ideal for the mobile. If you want to move around quickly, swipe up and a mini display of the pages appears. You can slide a bar left or right to show more, and tap on the page you want. The links – surrounded by a pale red border are hard to see at first, and mostly tucked away at the bottom of the page.
It would be a better experience on a tablet – to read the longer pieces you have to squeeze in and out with your fingers, but most copy is bite-sized and snackable – but tablets are less tube-friendly than mobiles.
In the end, which version you go with depends on what you want. The ‘inspiration’ app is more accessible, and comes with the features you expect, but by its nature, it’s less comprehensive that the ‘magazine’ version.
Either way though, the new publishing model has clearly made a once-ageing publication relevant (and useful) again.
