The first phase of Northcliffe newspapers’ reorganisation, together with restructuring at Teletext, will cost parent company Daily Mail and General Trust some £15m, it revealed today.

But the figure will be offset in the accounts by sales of shares in Reuters and the sale of other businesses.

Northcliffe’s Aim Higher programme will reduce the cost base by £25m over the next two years, and finance chiefs say the benefits are already beginning to show.

A trading update from parent company Daily Mail General Trust also sets out the "challenging" trading conditions faced by Northcliffe.

Despite this, revenues from digital publishing are 20 per cent above last year for the 11 months to August.

In the regional newspapers, overall advertising revenues were up 1.7 per cent on the same period last year, with property ads performing well, up 14 per cent overall. Recruitment advertising revenues, however, are the worst for 15 years.

Circulation revenues for the eleven months to August were 1.9 per cent ahead of the same period last year, or 0.1 per cent excluding acquisitions. In the January to June 2005 ABC period, Northcliffe continued to out-perform the regional newspaper industry average circulation figures.

The trading statement also covered changes at Teletext, where more than 50 jobs are set to go as the company refocuses on digital products.

It said: "Teletext is seeing declining revenues from its analogue television services as audiences decline, accentuated this year by a tough market generally, online competition and tighter market capacity for late availability holidays.

"As a result, a restructuring of the provision of these services is being undertaken."

With the national newspapers, the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday outperformed their peers in a declining market, and Associated’s Evening Standard saw its six-month ABCs up 12 per cent.

The statement added: "The Group's long-standing strategy of reducing its dependence on traditional UK advertising markets is serving it well and means that a satisfactory trading performance for the full year continues to be expected, a view in aggregate unchanged over the last six months."

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