The changes come as the Entertainment group enters the next phase of its strategy to drive growth across its international, digitally-focused brand business. The moves will accelerate the group’s ability to provide commercial partners with digital solutions and greater levels of audience engagement. Web and mobile growth, digital Newsstand development, on console solutions, increased video production, and a broadening content base are all part of the mix to better cater for emerging types of game play, says Future.
The moves will also see the group put an increased focus on building levels of service and developing engagement tools around strong editorial product.
The respective changes are:
• Don Ditri becomes Head of Commercial Development - Entertainment, focussing on driving increased digital commercial revenues, new business development and forming partnerships across all of Future’s UK Entertainment Portfolio. Don will relinquish publishing responsibilities for CVG and GamesRadar UK.
• Clair Porteous (pictured) becomes Head of Digital Development - Entertainment (Group Publisher CVG and GamesRadar UK). Alongside picking up publishing responsibilities for CVG and GamesRadar UK, Clair will also be responsible for driving both mobile and digital development, as well as consumer revenues across the group. The move follows Clair’s quadrupling of Total Film’s online reach in the past 12 months – overtaking Empireonline for the first time – as well as launching Future’s first mobile site and Total Film’s Interactive iOS product. Clair will relinquish publishing responsibilities for the Film portfolio to bring her experience and focus to the games space.
• Lee Nutter continues as Publisher of the Nintendo titles, whilst picking up additional publishing responsibilities for Future’s Film portfolio, comprising Total Film, SFX and Comic Heroes. Lee will relinquish publishing responsibilities for GamesMaster magazine.
• Richard Keith continues as Publisher for PCGamer, Edge and the Xbox brands. Richard will take the lead for the PCGamer brand globally and will be responsible for driving an aggressive development schedule around PCGamer.com to build on the incredible success the site has enjoyed to date. He also picks up additional responsibility to drive Future’s move into the mobile and tablet gaming markets, as well as the free-to-play gaming market.
• James Kick continues as Associate Publisher of both the PlayStation portfolio and the GamesMaster Golden Joystick Awards, whilst picking up additional publishing responsibility for GamesMaster magazine, which recently celebrated its 250th issue. The move sees GamesMaster magazine move closer to the Golden Joysticks and will also see the brand develop across digital formats.
• Tim Clark’s job title changes from Editor in Chief of Games to Group Senior Editor - Games to better reflect his responsibilities across the group in driving editorial excellence across all platforms.
The following roles remain unchanged:
• Ursula Morgan continues as VP of Media running all games brands in the US with the exception of GamesRadar.
• Mark Kramer continues as VP of Internet & Mobile Products leading GamesRadar globally.
• Keith Walker – who joined Future in April – continues as Head of Audience Development - Entertainment, focusing on driving audience growth and engagement across the entire Entertainment portfolio.
Simon Maxwell, Group Publishing Director, says: “We have realigned the structure of the Entertainment Portfolio to provide a greater focus on delivering rapid digital growth, increased and additional revenue streams, greater audience engagement and the agility to move into emerging markets. These steps will also allow us to drive more projects with a global focus and puts the Entertainment portfolio in an extremely strong position entering our next phase of evolution.”
In addition to these senior personnel changes, Nitro – the boys’ magazine for action and heroes – will cease to publish. All Nitro personnel will be redeployed within Future.
