Inside Entertainment is published six times a year and has a circulation around 180,000.

[This story has been updated.]

Toronto-based Kontent Publishing Inc., which publishes Inside Entertaiment, FQ, Sir and International Architecture & Design magazines, has temporarily* laid off six people. The “restructuring” was “necessary” given the poor state of the economy, said Geoffrey Dawe, president and owner of the Kontent Group.

Of the six laid off, two worked in administration and support roles, Dawe says, while the other four were on the editorial and art side. Five of the six staffers worked on Inside Entertainment, while the remaining admin person worked on FQ.

Dawe says he plans to bring back the editorial staff in mid-January to produce the next issue of Inside Entertainment, which is scheduled to come out in March.

“This is part of a restructuring that I would have done in June when I bought the company,” Dawe says. “I wanted to see how the year went. The year was not half-bad but we have to be careful going forward like any publisher these days. We’ve got to be responsible.”

Run-of-press ad pages for Inside Entertainment were down 24.4% in the first three quarters of 2008, versus the same period in 2007, according to figures from Leading National Advertisers.

Dawe points out that the magazine's ad pages were down just 2% in the third quarter, with one less issue than the previous year. "We are actually tracking better fall over fall," he says.

*An earlier version of this story did not make the temporary nature of the layoffs clear. We apologize for the confusion.