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The past few years have been more than a little jittery for international media; the lengthy global recession has savaged the core audience of highflyers.

Thousands have been made redundant in Europe's financial centres in the process, turning their backs on the media that helped them do their jobs.

Now, though, if the latest European Media & Marketing Survey is anything to go by, things are looking surprisingly brighter.

The survey from Interview-NSS, which quizzes the top 13 per cent of Europe's biggest-earning households on their media habits, has found that 1.2 million more (or 4 per cent) of this well-heeled group watches a pan-European TV channel compared with last year.

More impressive is the hint of a revival for print. Over the past decade, the sector has, at best, held on to existing readers, while pan-European TV has grown at its expense. But, as though in celebration of EMS's tenth anniversary, the reach of print has grown by a respectable 1.7 per cent - or 585,000 readers.

Even better was print's performance in EMS Select, a more exclusive off-shoot of the original survey, which samples the top 3 per cent of Europe's wealthiest households: the sector has grown by 5 per cent.

The pick of print is the Financial Times. Although the paper has long reigned as Europe's most-read international business newspaper, it has proved the whipping boy of recent media surveys and has been slammed by media buyers (with some justification) for a circulation and pricing strategy that has landed it in deep trouble.

So after seeing its reach grow by 312,000 readers (and, more importantly, 288,000 EMS Select readers), the FT's global sales director, Ben Hughes, has reason to be pleased. "International media have been losing circulation, so for us to do so well is encouraging. There are signs that the sector is picking up and people seem ever hungrier for global news," he says.

Hughes points to editorial innovations such as FTpm - its free afternoon edition - in the UK and a free afternoon briefing on the French Referendum on the European Union constitution, distributed in nine European cities, as ways in which the title intends to keep "on the front foot".

Despite the FT's good results, outperforming its daily rivals the International Herald Tribune (down slightly) and Wall Street Journal Europe (flat), it couldn't prevent Time replacing it as the second-biggest EMS title.

The news weekly has grown at more than double the rate of the FT and now reaches 18 per cent of the EMS universe. Mike Jeans, Time & Fortune's research director, says aggressive consumer marketing and a subscription drive through its AOL sister have aided growth, particularly in the key markets of France, Germany and the UK.

The survey's fastest-growing title, though (and the biggest by reach), is National Geographic. Its circulation has been falling since 1998, so what's the explanation for the addition of more than 1.6 million readers?

"There's been a push to make the magazine more relevant," National Geograpic's international marketing director, Rebecca Hill, says. "We still run great articles on wildlife and people living in far- flung places, but now do more on topical issues such as oil prices and obesity. People are warming to these changes."

The star pan-European TV performer was BBC World, which has grown fastest in both the regular survey and EMS Select. In fact, its director of airtime sales, Jonathan Howlett, points out, the channel has increased weekly viewing every year since EMS launched.

Yet CNN remains the number- one news channel by some distance, even though it is growing slower than its rivals. In any case, CNN International's executive vice-president of ad sales, Kevin Razvi, argues CNN is more interested in the EMS Select audience, which has grown by 5 per cent.

"The further up the socio-demographic chain, the more people watch CNN. The upper end is disproportionately more important to us. We'd never claim to be a ge-neralist channel."

Interestingly, it is two non-news channels that have the largest appeal among Europe's affluent. The first is Eurosport, followed by MTV. "You think business elite and you usually think news environment," Ben Money, Eurosport's research manager, says. "But while it is true that this audience has to watch news, they want to watch us."

So does EMS 2005 reflect a healthy international advertising market?

Jason Hayford, the Starcom international investment manager, says the results point to "the general re-emergence of international media. Ad inventory is filling up faster than at any time in the past five years." But, he warns, there is still much uncertainty in the market and advertising levels are still nowhere near 2000 levels.

At the FT, regarded as a bellwether for the international sector, ad revenues are up 3 per cent year on year. Yet Hughes insists the market is "still incredibly short- term. It's still impossible to predict how the market will swing from one month to the next."

PAN-EUROPEAN TELEVISION

PETV channel % reach % growth % reach % growth

of EMS vs EMS of EMS vs EMS

2004 Select Select

2004

Eurosport 59.3 3.9 47.2 3.2

MTV 56.2 4.3 60.3 3.6

CNN 53.1 2.0 68.4 4.8

Euronews 40.4 3.5 47.2 5.2

BBC World 39.6 7.7 52.8 8.8

Discovery 37.5 4.5 45.6 4.2

Sky News 34.1 4.5 47.2 5.1

National Geographic 32.6 4.0 40.2 4.8

CNBC 24.0 3.6 34.4 5.8

Travel Channel 20.6 - 23.1 -

TV5 19.3 1.5 24.5 2.6

Bloomberg 15.6 2.1 25.0 4.6

All PETV (monthly) 74.1 3.5 77.3 3.9

Source: EMS/EMS Select 2005 by Interview-NSS. EMS represents the top 13

per cent highest earners (universe is 39,582,000); EMS Select represents

the top 3 per cent highest earners (universe is 8,274) in 17 European

countries. Reach figures are for the past 12 months.

PAN-EUROPEAN PRINT

Title % reach % growth % reach % growth

of EMS vs EMS of EMS vs EMS

2004 Select Select

2004

National Geographic 31.0 4.3 30.7 7.0

Time 18.1 2.4 29.4 4.7

Financial Times 16.6 0.9 33.8 3.1

Reader's Digest 16.6 3.1 17.6 4.5

Newsweek 12.7 1.9 21.5 2.5

The Economist 10.9 1.2 20.7 3.0

USA Today 8.0 0.8 16.9 1.6

Intl Herald Tribune 7.5 -0.1 15.7 1.2

BusinessWeek 6.1 0.8 14.0 2.1

Wall Street Journal Europe 5.3 0.0 12.5 0.5

Scientific American 4.0 0.2 5.8 0.6

Fortune 3.0 -0.5 8.1 1.0

Harvard Business Review 3.0 0.2 8.2 1.5

Forbes 2.9 0.0 7.4 1.8

Euromoney 2.0 0.4 4.0 0.7

The Business 1.8 -0.5 3.6 -0.6

Institutional Investor 1.3 0.1 2.4 0.3

All PE print 33.8 1.7 50.0 4.6

Source: EMS/EMS Select 2005 by Interview-NSS. EMS represents the top 13

per cent highest earners (universe is 39,582,000); EMS Select represents

the top 3 per cent highest earners (universe is 8,274) in 17 European

countries. Reach figures are for the past 12 months.