Media

Conor McNicholas leaves NME

By | Published on Thursday 25 June 2009

The NME’s editor, Conor McNicholas has announced that he is leaving the music magazine to take up the editor role at Top Gear magazine. McNicholas joined the NME in 2002, having previously worked for defunct dance mag Muzik and still very much alive dance mag Mixmag.

Announcing his resignation on Twitter, he said: “I have resigned. Seven years as NME Editor coming to an end. It’s been a fucking privilege. New job racing towards me… I’m leaving to go and edit Top Gear magazine at the BBC. Amazing job for a petrolhead like me. Will be at NME for a good few weeks yet”.

Predictably the news of McNicholas’ departure led to speculation in the blogosphere that he might have been pushed, NME’s falling circulation figures being cited as a possible reason. That seems rather unlikely, though, because while it’s true NME’s readership has declined during Conor’s editorship, the decline is in line with industry-wide trends and has been countered by an expansion of the NME brand into new areas, online, on air and in the live domain, and into new territories, the US in particular.

In fact it’s assumed McNicholas’ experience in taking an existing media brand and creating new products and revenue streams around it (something he’s won awards for) will have been key in his appointment at Top Gear magazine, as BBC Worldwide is known to have ambitions to further utilise the popular motoring brand on a global basis.

So, assuming we’re not speculating on the reasons for Conor’s depature what can we speculate on? Well, first who will get the top job at the title? IPC’s Paul Cheal implies he hasn’t as yet made up his mind on that one. And second, what is Calvin Harris, who’s not been much of a Conor fan of late, going to do with all these t-shirts – http://twitpic.com/6w8u9? On seeing Conor’s resignation tweet yesterday, Calvin responded: “OH MY GOD @ConorMcNicholas WHAT THE FUCK AM I GOING TO DO WITH ALL THESE TSHIRTS?!! YOU’VE TRULY DEALT THE KILLER BLOW, FAIR PLAY TO YOU”.



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