LONDON (Brand Republic) - Trinity Mirror has closed its high-profile showbusiness website icShowbiz.com as part of the scaling down of its online operations.
The site, which was only launched in December, is to be closed, as is icSport.com while the planned launch of lifestyle site icChoice has been aborted.
icShowbiz was backed by a television and press advertising campaign and was a rival to news and gossip site Peoplenews.com.
Trinity Mirror Group yesterday announced it is to sell its ISP ic24, which has 240,000 active users. Analysts have forecast that the sale of the ISP, combined with that of its magazine and exhibition business and its Sportinglife.com joint venture with the Press Association, could raise more than £85m.
As part of the cuts, the group will slash internet spending from £150m, announced a year ago, to £90m in the next three years. Around 60 jobs are expected to be lost as a result of the shake-up, which is part of a review of the business following the merger of Trinity and the Mirror Group in 1999.
Philip Graf, Trinity Mirror CEO, highlighted the group鈥檚 commitment to developing a network of regional websites using the 鈥渋c鈥 brand. He said, 鈥淲e are still very confident of the opportunity provided by the internet where we have a distinctive capability like the regional network.鈥
This morning, the group鈥檚 shares climbed 6.5% to 493p.