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TWST: Can we start with a quick introduction to Johnston Group (london: and how you see the company positioned today?

Mr. Bowdler: Johnston Press is a publisher of local and regional newspapers and associated websites. We now have almost 250 local and regional newspapers. More than half of those are paid for newspapers, primarily weeklies. We have more than 130 websites. We’ve grown rapidly since we went public in 1988, primarily through acquisition. In the last 6 years we’ve made 3 very large acquisitions including Emap’s newspaper interests in 1996, which doubled our size, Portsmouth and Sunderland newspapers in 1999, and Regional Independent Media earlier this year. We are now one of the four largest regional publishers in the UK.

TWST: The last time we spoke you were steering away from the metropolitan areas to a degree. Has that changed?

Mr. Bowdler: Yes, our history as a weekly newspapers publisher was in towns which are away from the metropolitan centers. But as we have grown that has changed. Portsmouth and Sunderland newspapers for example brought us daily newspapers in those two large cities. And similarly Regional Independent Media makes us the principal publisher in Leeds with the Yorkshire Post, a daily morning regional paper. So we have certainly evolved and become a publisher of some of the larger daily newspapers in the country. But if you look at our mix, we are still predominantly a weekly newspaper publisher. I mentioned that we publish almost 250 titles and of those half are paid for weekly newspapers and these paid for weeklies are essentially market leaders in secondary towns and communities in the UK away from the metropolitan centers. So that is still very much the skew of our business, but not the only aspect of it.

TWST: Do you have acquisitions in your sights looking to the next 12 to 18 months?

Mr. Bowdler: We keep a very close eye on what goes on in our industry. It’s a small industry and we know most, if not all, of the publishers in it. I hope that over that period we would have acquired one or two smaller targets in or around our existing publishing areas. Whether or not we have made another substantial acquisition will depend on whether something attractive has come along. That is more difficult to predict and having just made a major acquisition there is no pressing need for us to do another large deal. I think in an ideal world we would like to see Regional Independent Media bedded in and producing the benefits which we said to the market it would. But equally if something really attractive were to come along we would take a close look at it.

TWST: Who do you benchmark yourself against, who are you competing against?

Mr. Bowdler: We are actually the only pure play quoted regional newspaper company. Trinity Mirror and Daily Mail General Trust which owns Northcliffe, are both quoted but they have other media interests. In terms of benchmarking, we have consistently achieved industry leading margins. We are the benchmark to aim for. We are significantly ahead of those two companies in terms of the returns we make, but we do see them as our principal competitors together with Gannett of the US who own Newsquest here in the UK. We do compete aggressively in the field of acquisitions and I’m sure that will continue. Whether we actually compete would depend on each specific acquisition, but I would anticipate any acquisition of significance to attract the interests of the major players. We do also compete in the marketplace. It depends on the area, but we do have publishing overlaps with the other majors and indeed with various other groups in certain parts of the country. Competition in that sense is more of a local issue.