Time-out with Time Out Tony Elliott : Founding Editor and Publisher Why do you have lunch so late (it’s 2.30 pm), no time to eat? Cos I get up late. (laugh) Well, usually I’m always busy. Now I go to America every four or five weeks cos we have Time Out in New York and Chicago. I just came back from Dubai cos there’s also Time Out Dubai. So usually you have to go to all the places that have Time Out? (Now there are different 17 editions of Time Out Magazine in 17 different cities around the world.) Absolutely yes. But I didn’t always set up an office there cos the only magazines that we own and run ourselves are (Time Out) in London, New York and Chicago. And then there are magazines in other places which are all licensed magazine such as Shanghai, Cyprus, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Mumbai, to name a few. I’ve always wondered how did you get so much energy to do so many different versions of Time Out? Well these are all the people who wanted to do the magazines in different countries. That means they have their own staffs. One of the strategic rules that we have is to find as many people as we can who wants to do Time Out as a local edition. And we hope we’ll end up in a list of magazines, hopely lots of weekly Time Out, around the world, which varied a lot from country to country. Personally I considered Time Out Guides and Time Out Magazine one of the best guidebooks cos it listed all the things that interests me. That’s good. Could you recall those days when you started it and how you expanded it to so many other things? I started the magazine in 1968 when I was a student. Cos there were a lot of things happening in London that I wanted to know about and it was also the time when there was a lot of changes happening. It was the start of a whole new innovative generation of things, things that are now very well-established, like experimental theatre or lots of types of music. And all the existing magazines that told you about these things weren’t very good. So I realized that somebody needed to organize the informations so I brought it together in Time Out. It was a very small magazine and grew from there. So it was really a one man magazine in the beginning? It was me and 3 other people, all friends. They’re not with Time Out anymore, one lives in L.A. and became a landscape gardener, one in the recruitment business and one a very well-knowned DJ on the radio. Has it (Time Out) changed so much? Do you still carry on those beliefs to gather all the informations on alternative events going on in London or wherever? Yeah. But now it’s become a comprehensive magazine which is very big and very established cos it’s been around for 38 years. Though started so much smaller, Time Out has always been a reflection of what’s happening at any one time. So it changes over time, for example, when I started the magazine, there was no clubbing scene, which didn’t happen til the late 70’s. Or things like Gay and Lesbian which are not as phenomenal as it became nowadays. But then the gay movement became very political and moved on to another phase, above ground lifestyle, I must say. How does it work actually? I presumed it’s more of getting infos from people rather than going out to find them these days? Time Out is not just as easy as receiving the informations and make it into a list. Because you have to have expertise, guidance and critical overview of things. It’s all assembled by people who are experts in their areas and we called them editorial team, which sometime is just one person, say, in the case of dance or children. But in the case of music, there are 6-7 people, wherein films are five and so on. But each team doesn’t tend or expect or are not employed to write on other sections. People who are listed don’t have to pay for it, only advertisers. We’ve always done that from the very very beginning. It was the right thing to do and no questions about it. But not everything will be featured in Time Out? Everything that’s worth covering is listed, right? Until you have a large amount of information, then people needed to know what’s good within that information, so some things are featured in the sense that they have a picture or a longer preview. It’s all to do with guiding people through the informations. But basically, we tried to pick out and support things that are interesting and good. It doesn’t have to be neutral. Some people would say that Time Out is kind of polical, but with a small ‘p’ cos it has a strong voice or opinions about things but we’re not political in the sense that we are very left wing or something like that. You always say that Time Out is and always will be ‘independent’. Personally I’m always curious how come independent thingies tend to be better or more interesting than the mainstream. Why is that? I don’t think the integrity has necessarily changed. But the style or the context of what they do changes. So you don’t see them as independent anymore. But I saw people who’re working in the regular studio has integrity and are independent. For example, Martin Scorsese, who’s in the studio and still a master in his own sense. ‘Independent’ from? From the consumer industrial society. To still have that freedom even if you become successful and bet it in a different kind of world. At Time Out, we can do it cos we’re completely independent as a business. We’ll not be part of a BIG media company. Now I can even put nothing on the cover And your readers will just say ‘COOL’ (laugh) and that’s the major ‘plus’ or nice things that happened when you really stick to your beliefs.
		It’s very current. But in some ways, it has become a kind of historical records, too. Of course. We keep all the back issues downstairs. And when we look at them, we see that the magazine’s become a diary of everything that’s happened. There are some small areas which we’re not very systematic on covering or something that are more conservative that we don’t give priority to. If you take arts for example, we are more interested in giving space and profile to new artists. Surely people like me or some other young people would wanna have a boss like you. Oh, good. (smile) So what sets it apart from other free magazines that also listed things that are going on in town? (Rumour has it that free weeklies such as The Guardian's Guide, Metro Life in the Evening Standard and The Knowledge in The Times have hit its circulation tremendously.) The marketing model is really different. Readers are also different. They(free supplements) will never adequately compete cos they don't offer our depth of information, and people who read Time Out regularly don't see them as a direct replacement. I mean we can also give Time Out for free and charge the advertisers more to cover that but it’ll be different. The distribution will be different too. Now you’ll know where to get Time Out, rather than find it in front of the tube station or sometimes you just can’t find it at all as what happens with free magazines. Who came up with the ideas of pocketbooks and some other versions of Time Out, say, Cheap Eats in London, London for Visitors, etc. They’re kinda evolved. Lots of what we do are in response for what we believed people are interested in and there’ll be a market for that. We’re in a major city of the world and we’re a significant weekly magazine. Nearly half a million regular consumes our informations. We know approximately who they are. We’re increasingly building up our online presence. Because online, you can cover all the cities in the world and you get the simple relationship with people throughout the world. And mainly the revenue will come from advertising. Also much smaller but significant is the revenues that generates from ticket sales or activities that we held. But we will certainly not do things like cinema or restaurant or theatre by ourselves because then we just can’t tell people to go to those places even if they’re truly good. Do you still go clubbings and stuffs? No. (Laugh) Since the beginning I don’t have time to go to anything cos I was doing the magazine. I still go to see films and music a bit. Or to restaurants. And I really like theatre. I don’t really enjoy clubs particularly and when these things happened in the 80’s, I was on the older side and I don’t drink anymore, so.. (laugh) Your opinions, preferences or things to say about London? To me the most striking thing about London, which I think can equally applies to the country (UK) is its originality and the open-mindedness of people. London welcomes new things and that makes it so charming and constantly evolving, you know.