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Just metres from Time Out's office on Tottenham Court Road, signposted by its giant iconic logo, a sea of people thrust the new London freesheets into the hands of tourists and weary commuters. The young, affluent readers in the 38-year-old listing magazine's demographic are now firmly in these new upstarts' sights.

Time Out founder and chairman Tony Elliott, however, is unconcerned. His title has already seen off Associated's earlier attempt at competition, Standard Lite, and he dismisses the latest titles as being for "junkie readers". He is "gobsmacked" the papers run listings from the same agency and questions the wisdom of running suggestions for planning an evening out in publications that many people won't read until after 6pm.

Elliott acknowledges that his title, which last year moved away from covers featuring the celebrities du jour to ones in which London itself was the star, ultimately occupies a niche - albeit one with more than 92,000 sales a week, expected to pass 100,000 by the end of 2007.

"It's a challenging magazine to get into and people find it daunting," he admits. "But we wouldn't want to dilute it."

What the noise of the launches will inevitably do, though, is force Time Out to remind Londoners of its existence and points of difference. After years of under-investment in marketing, an ad push on the Tube has helped to add almost 3,000 copy sales, many of them on the newsstand, in the first half of this year.

Luxury brands

The focus now is on building on its profile with advertisers. Elliott recently brought in Graeme Tottle, former commercial director on Emap's men's magazine Arena, to lead the ad team.

"There's a lot of business that other publishers manage to get and we have to be more aggressive about it," says Elliott. The magazine has established clout in its core sectors such as film and music, practically becoming a default option for such advertisers, but he wants it to push harder for luxury goods brands.

Tottle is also briefed to coordinate magazine and online ads more closely. "Online doesn't have to be a threat to magazine ads - (it) can create more opportunities and I'd like to be in a position where magazine advertisers automatically have ads online, too," says Elliott.

After a short-lived attempt in 1970, edited by none other than Jeremy Beadle, Time Out will again extend its reach beyond London in March next year with a Manchester edition aiming to sell up to 25,000 copies. A second regional edition, targeting Liverpool, will appear by September.

Elliott admits the Manchester launch, prompted by the closure of City Life last year and trialled with a one-off special timed to coincide with the Labour Party conference, should have come sooner.

"Our energies were in the US and you can only do so much," he says.

As much as half of Manchester's circulation is expected to come from copies given to members of cultural centres and distributed to hotels.

Once a regional base is established, with dedicated commercial and editorial teams, Elliott will look at other cities - he has already been approached by promotional body Market Team Birmingham. But, in a sign of the times, he believes for many cities a print product wouldn't work and expects to reach them solely online.

Elliott has been a vocal critic of the free model for websites, but begrudgingly accepts it is here to stay. Since May, Time Out has put all of its print listings content online and he is gradually adding more community aspects to the site.

Despite spending his adult life in the business with a title he has nurtured since its birth, Elliott still sits at a distance from the mainstream magazine industry. He wants to find an investor to ultimately buy out his US business, but guards the UK operation's independence fiercely. And not many MDs would roll their eyes when they tell you they renamed a division as "brand solutions" because it seemed to fit with the language everyone else is using.

Industry politics

He counts the likes of Felix Dennis and Nicholas Coleridge as good friends, but otherwise stays out of industry politics to focus his energies on quietly building his empire. He also enjoys pursuits befitting a London publisher - sitting on the boards of Somerset House, the Roundhouse and Film London.

Elliott maintains, however, a palpable enthusiasm and relishes his position as something of a guru for young entrepreneurs, to whom he occasionally holds counsel, though despite an earlier dalliance with style magazine i-D, he no longer looks for titles to invest in.

"It's important that people in my position are around and open to talk to, and I still believe in independent specialist publishing," he says. "There are still opportunities to distribute your magazines through record and bookshops and some of our specialist newsagents are terrific. If you've got a good product and put it out, people will buy it." With a bit of patience, perhaps even 100,000 of them will, every week.

ELLIOTT'S MILESTONES

1968: Elliott launches Time Out in London, initially publishing every three weeks

1981: After an industrial dispute, all staff are fired, 42 of whom form the rival City Limits, which folds just over a decade later. Time Out relaunches with more coverage of nightlife and entertainment

1983: Time Out publishes first guide book, the debut edition of its Eating and Drinking Guide

1987: Buys French magazine Paris Passion

1989: Sets up Paris office to publish Time Out-branded guidebooks and other publications

1992: Time Out publishes TV listings for first time

1994: Launches website www.timeout.com

1995: Launches first US edition, in New York

2001: Time Out Istanbul, the first licensed international edition, launches

2005: Launches Time Out Chicago

2007: Plans for Time Out launches in Manchester and Liverpool.