C21 turns 21

On the day C21 Media celebrates its 21st birthday, David Jenkinson, editor-in-chief and managing director, reflects on how the company began and how much the industry has changed.

Let’s begin 25 years ago. Because that’s where it started.

Odiri Iwuji, Ian Thornton, Mark Fewell and I were working for International Thomsons, a great publisher that had a raft of titles including Screen, Broadcast and TV World.

That’s where we lived, on TV World, in a little corner of the offices of Broadcast, then a mighty paper with the profile and influence to change things.

Nobody really understood what our odd little ‘international’ title was. It was about the less serious stuff the Broadcast journalists couldn’t be bothered to understand. Why should they? They were on a weekly newspaper covering the UK broadcast business. It didn’t get much better!

This was before the internet.

After a year or so EMAP bought Thomsons and folded Broadcast into its own less successful TV Week, and set about telling everyone what was what. What was what wasn’t at all, and so we left and joined Moving Pictures, itself an edgy start-up that had ruffled a few feathers in its time.

And then Variety came along and bought Moving Pictures and set about telling everyone what was what. What was what wasn’t at all, and so we needed another plan.

By this stage we had a few awards under our belt and had run monthly, weekly and daily papers for some pretty big publishers, so we had the confidence to go it alone.

We’d also been seduced by technology, as our arrival in the business had coincided with the Mac revolution, which made desktop publishing possible.

And we’d heard about this thing called the internet, which most traditional publishers didn’t take seriously.

We did.

What we also took seriously was our belief that to build a company that mattered you had to work with the right people. We’d been surrounded by buffoons at EMAP and Cahners and we’d had enough.

In our new business we were determined to do two things: build a company that would allow us to grow old gracefully, and never, ever again work with people we didn’t want to be around.

Between 1995 and 1997 we planned our move, and on July 5, 1997 we quit our jobs with one gloriously co-ordinated email and launched C21Media.

We rented a big warehouse space in Shoreditch – a place with cheap rent, not then a buzzing social hub – and bought a ping-pong table. Our plan was based around the launch of a website, but we had to start with a magazine first, because nobody really knew what websites were back then.

Channel 21 launched at Mipcom 1997 and C21Media.net in May 2000.

The website went live while we were on the plane to the LA Screenings that year. We’d done some sums, and based on the three banners we’d sold for £10,000 each, decided we were going to be rich.

I checked into the Chateau Marmont and started working up a phone bill uploading stories back to the site in the UK, which ended up over US$800. We gave out cards at the Screenings telling people to check out the website when they got back to their hotels for the latest news.

Heady days. And this was The Internet. What could possibly go wrong?

A few months later, in June 2000, the first internet crash happened. Things took a turn for the worst.

But, we dusted ourselves down and worked hard for the next 18 years to arrive at where we are today.

This week we celebrate 21 years of C21 with a party in Ibiza with many of the people who have been part of the C21 story.

They supported us, believed in us, stuck with us and worked hard with us to ensure this very special little brand has grown to represent a lot more than just the information we provide the international entertainment business every day.

A few years ago, a friend in the business asked me what I thought C21 would be remembered for. I thought hard and set off on a ramble about defining multi-platform content in the digital age, about being at the vanguard of internet content creation and management, about how C21TV showed it was possible to make high-end television delivered over digital, and to sustain a print business by ensuring it was integrated into a digital offering that touched its audience on many different levels.

He just smiled and said: “I think you’ll be remembered for making things fun.” And I think we’ll take that. The international entertainment business would be a much gloomier place without C21, and we’ve certainly had a lot of fun along the way, whatever we’ve been doing.

So to all the people that have performed on this stage down the years, and the ones who are here today, thanks for making this business such a pleasure. You won’t find a smarter, nicer bunch of people anywhere.

And to all the people who believed in us down the years. Thanks. We know it wasn’t always easy and your respect and support for everything we try to do is so much appreciated.

Today, we celebrate in Ibiza with 250 of our closest friends.
It will be all sorts of things. But let’s say, most of all, like this amazing brand you’ve helped us create, it will be an awful lot of fun.

Here’s to the next 21 (**shiver**).

Normal service resumes Monday and C21’s 21st birthday celebrations will continue in the Mipcom issue xx.