Magazine Hot List 1992: Highlights

The Road To RecoveryBy Eric GarlandAfter 20 years as a magazine executive in New York, John Prebich decided in the fall of 1990 to gamble on a trio of specialty titles far removed from his usual haunts. He acquired Workbasket, Workbench and Flower & Garden from Modern Handcraft Inc., a Kansas City publisher founded during the Depression and little change since. Over the next year Prebich made up for lost time. He cut staff from 138 to 29, boosted subscription and newsstand prices, renegotiated printing contracts, switched from newsprint to coated stock, put the like of Jimmy Carter and Deborah Norville on redesigned covers and actively solicited national advertisers. The result: Ad pages in the three books jumped 40% and circulation revenues soared, while overhead was reduced by 70%."We applied some pizzazz, some hard work, some Madison Avenue savvy," says Prebich, formerly with CBS Magazines and General Media. "It's going like gangbusters." So much so that he claims an investment of "between $12 and $20 million" is now valued at three times that amount.Who says no one is making money in magazines anymore?Prebich's good fortune is not easily duplicated, of course. (Most of the employee cuts were achieved by dropping in-house subscription fulfillment and turning sales reps into independent contractors.) But for publishers large and small, the lesson is clear: Manage well during hard time, and the profits will come in due course.Magazine officials hope mightily that 1992 produces those profits. The false promise of a recovery in 1991 turned into the reality of a second straight down year for the industry. Publishers Information Bureau figures showed and 8.7% decline in consumer magazines ad pages, and actual ad revenues no doubt fell even more. "There's a lot of shakiness in the publishing community," says Joel Kushins, media director at Bozell/New York. "They're all asking when will it end, where will it take us, what will it mean?"How soon and how strongly the recovery arrives remains a guess. Yet the signs of a stirring are at hand. For one, some smaller publishers are reporting healthy gains. Small companies in general rebound more quickly from a recession, and magazine group with low overheads follow that pattern. "A smaller magazine that is hot in circulation is going to come back faster," says George Hirsh, publisher of Rodale Press' Runner's World. With ad pages up 15%, notes Hirsh, "1991 was the best year we've had.""We see a return to bigger budgets in he second half of the year," says Chris Meigher, president of Time Inc.'s New York magazines division. "The talk is a lot more positive. But talk is cheap."Besides talking a good game, publishers have concentrated on three areas to get themselves well: editorial profile, circulation quality and new technology.For magazines without a strong editorial platform, the last two years have been humbling—or even life-threatening. "The whole thing is product," says Bob Brink, executive vp of Hearst Magazines. "If you don't have it, being the second, third or fourth book isn't going to be nice."Hearst ran into such unpleasantness with Connoisseur, a lower-tier title in the recession-battered affluent market. Last month it folded the magazine, which had a 30% decline in ad pages in 1991. By pruning a money-loser, Hearst will have more to invest in existing titles and new magazines. The scale of its reinvestment has been reported as absurdly high—$1.25 million for the new editor of Harper's Bazaar, for instance—but Brink is confident that recent top-level hires will pay off.At Time Inc., Meigher points to acquisitions like Sunset and development projects such as Parenting, Sports Illustrated for Kids and Cooking Light as examples of books poised to recoup their costs. "Some of that seed money that was invested should bear fruit in '93-'95," he says. The ripest gains will come from circulation, as consumers start spending again."You'll see a return to more traditional circulation programs, focused more on an editorial sell and less on gimmicks and giveaways," notes Meigher. Over the course of the decade, he predicts, circulation will become the main revenue generator for mass-market titles. "Revenues from readers are now slightly more than those from advertising. That will move higher, to 60-40."Magazines will need a stronger contribution from circulation, since the chances of a return to '80s-style advertising rate increases are slim. Overall media spending is expected to grow only modestly in the U.S. So the pressure on ad rates will continue, with the deal-making habits of the last two years setting the tone."For the people who have been negotiating off the rate card, it will be very hard to change," says Hirsh. Agrees Brink, "I don't think the rate card structure we know will ever be back."Thus the focus on a third area: technological advances. Several magazines are moving ahead with selective binding of editorial features, which they count on as a value-added device to entice advertisers. The cost of producing such stylized editions should become much more affordable; the benefits have yet to be seen.Magazines are also exploring ways to sell themselves in more than just paper-and-ink form. If the age of multimedia is at hand, publishers want to be ready. General Media is already offering on-line version of its titles, with a digital Penthouse having signed up 35,000 subscribers since its debut in November. "What we have available now is sketchy—it's about 10% of what will be available," says Kathy Keeton, General Media's president.Progress, if not prosperity, is just around the corner.The 1991 List:1. Parenting2. Parade3. Automobile4. Entertainment Weekly5. Outside Magazine6. U.S. News & World Report7. Child8. Scientific American9. The Economist10. PenthouseJames Seymore: Editor of the YearBy Judith Newman"No one goes home without a kiss," booms an alarmingly jovial Jim Seymore. An Entertainment Weekly editor rolls her eyes and smiles indulgently. Today is one of the "pours" that have become an institution at the magazine: Any time a person leaves, starts a job or has a birthday, out comes the bubbly—which given the size of the staff, means at least several pours a month. This little soiree is for Seymore himself. Not only is today his 49th birthday, but he recently found out he's been selected as Adweek's Editor of the Year. Earlier, a more grounded Seymore had sent out and electronic memo: "All this attention is a bit embarrassing, so let just thank you for all your kind words."James W. Seymore, Jr. has not risen to the top of Time Inc.'s latest launch by acting the gruff outsider. He is, by all accounts, a consummate team player, hail-fellow-well-met, born in the bayous of Baton Rouge but raised in the sleek chrome offices of midtown Manhattan. He's a large, burly, handsome man, fond of his golf game, his martinis and his management slogans. ("We will not be out-thought, out-fought or out-worked by any competitor" is a fave.) "All people are like wolves," he says. "We are herd animals; we are meant to live and work in packs."As the leader of the pack at EW, he's done something that only one year ago seems an impossible dream: turned a magazine that it would have been kind to call "superfluous" into a lively, sometimes provocative and eminently entertaining read. EW may never be a critic's darling, but it's nonetheless managing to reach that wide expanse of 18-45-year-olds between the two coasts with not much free time but a bit of extra cash, a group that wants the biggest bang for its entertainment buck. Since Seymore came on board in July 1990, five months after the magazines rocky launch, circulation has risen from 450,000-500,000 to 800,000. And while ad pages for the magazine industry as a whole were off 8% last year, EW's rose 17%, from 905 in 1990 to 1,055 in 1991.Says Time Inc. Magazines editorial director Richard Stolley, "This guy took a magazine that was a great idea but poorly executed, a magazine that was floundering, and turned it into something with an enormous amount of inventiveness and fun."When Jeff Jarvis (formerly People's superb television reviewer and now television critic for TV Guide) came up with the idea for Entertainment Weekly, the internal buzzword on the magazine was "product not people." Effectively, this meant that it was designed to be a serious insider's look at every aspect of the world of entertainment, with an emphasis on the careers of the entertainers—their "product," not their personalities. Time had lost big with its previous two start-ups, 1983's TV/Cable Week (about $45 million) and 1986's Picture Week ($30 million). With a like amount sunk into Entertainment Weekly, its first launch since the debt-bloated Time-Warner merger, the company scarcely could afford another embarrassing flop.From the beginning, Entertainment Weekly seemed to be trying too hard. "Kick Back. Chill Out. Hang Loose. Have Fun," ran the ubiquitous ads—you could almost hear the copywriters toying with the idea of calling EW readers "hep cats." The design was a hodgepodge, with reviews and feature jumbled together and news items in Spy-like fine print running down the margins. The viewer's eye leapt about the page like a frog dodging cars on the interstate. The tone could be gratuitously snide. "This magazine will be a voice for quality in a business that needs on sniffer Jarvis in his first Editor's Note.The higher-ups were not amused. Too many movies were getting bad grade; Jarvis was not making nice with the industry. The company also started to see EW as a million-plus circulation vehicle, which demanded a more populist tone. "Unlike People, we weren't selling bodily fluids on the cover of the magazine," insists a former top staffer. "We were selling entertainment choices for yuppies."Exit Jarvis; enter Seymore, then executive editor at People. At the first staff meeting after he took over, Seymore leveled with his troop: "If this were an airplane, you'd be on fire and losing altitude." To stabilize EW, he brought assistant managing editors Don Morrison and Dick Lemon over from People."When I came in, EW had a tendency to embrace the obscure and marginal while sneering at the popular and prominent," says Seymore. "I had to change that. I wanted to make it accessible and more generous of spirit." Most important, Seymore widened the definition of what the magazine did. "We weren't chroniclers pf so-called 'product,' but popular culture."Critics read between the lines and say Seymore was ordered to make the magazine more personality-driven and lighter—in other words, more like People. Publisher Mike Klingensmith demures. "The problem at the beginning was that we seemed to be dripping with opinion—EW came across as almost unbearably judgmental. Jim found a place in the magazine for things that are poplar without having it go soft or lose its critical edge."In part, Seymore did this by working with design director Michael Grossman to create a more traditional, readable format. In its Jarvis days, EW started with reviews, then more reviews (intermingled with news), then features, then even more reviews. Seymore and Grossman put all news up front, features in the middle, and reviews in the back, so the reader doesn't feel barraged by opinion.As a manager as well as an editor, Seymore wins high marks. "You hear about editorial dictators like Jann Wenner or Clay Felker who run magazines by fiat," says Grossman. "Jim's the opposite. He doesn't draw boundaries around what people's job descriptions are. He has a knack for pulling good ideas out of people." Most staff members agree, although adding Seymore is quick to anger—then quick to apologize."It's strange to realize that a lot of people's emotions rest on my moods," says Seymore. "Depending on what kind of mood I'm in, people on my staff can have a good day or a bad day." Pause. Wicked smile. "I like that."Staffers are also quick to confirm Seymore's reputation as a man who does not exactly turn a blind eye to feminine charm. In a father/daughter "Indian" camping ground he participates in with his 6-year-old, Hadley, she chose the nickname Running Deer, and Seymore dubbed himself Hunting Bear. He could hardly have picked a more appropriate moniker. It's become an accepted rule around the office that a tousled mane of hair and a certain pneumatic je ne sai quoi are part of an editorial assistant's job description. "Not that the girls aren't qualified," says one female editor. "They're Ivy League graduates and extremely capable. But Jim and his friends like to have something nice to look at in the morning." One EW staff writer dubbed three of the most blond and nubile EAs "the Heathers."Seymore comes by his Southern charm honestly. Born in Baton Rouge, La., and raised in North Carolina and Virginia, Seymore spent the better part of his youth "smoking and cruising with me in his dad's 1957 Chevy Impala," according to his best friend, Barry Lyngard, now the owner of a chain of pet food stores in Delaware. "We had the smoking down right, we had the studly car, and in about four year we never succeeded in picking up one girl."Seymore went on to Princeton—taking a year off to watch bullfights and drink cheap wine in Spain—and then landed a reporters job at the Richmond Times Dispatch. After a stint as a special assistant to Daniel Boorstin at the Smithsonian, he returned to journalism with five years at The Washingtonian, got married to a New York blue blood, had his older daughter Chloe, divorced the blood, moved to New York, worked as a writer at CBS, and in 1977 landed at People. (There he met his second wife, Joyce, then a photo editor and now a freelance writer.) Working his way up the masthead, he was considered an outstanding writer and a killer reporter with a reputation for, as Seymore puts its, the journalistic "seduction and betrayal" that makes for great People profiles."Whatever you think of People, it changed the nature of journalism in America," says Seymore. "I took a perverse pride in every aspect of that magazine. I loved the early days. I'd be at a fancy new York cocktail party, and all the men would be in the living room discussing bond trading, and I'd be in the kitchen with the wives discussing Farah Fawcett-Majors."Today, discussions about EW do touch on financing. Insiders say Entertainment Weekly already has cost Time Inc. almost as much as the failures of TV/Cable Week and Picture Week combined. Losses have slowed from a flood to a mere torrent—from $45 million in 1990 to $35 million in 1991, according to trade reports. Even with its deep pockets, how long can the ultra-leveraged Time Warner afford to feed the ravenous maw of its new baby?"We all know how tough it is in this climate," says Stolley. "God knows I'll be happy, given the swamp we're in right now, if we can just keep slogging through. But even if we're not profitable as quickly as we projected several years ago, we know we've got a winner here."Seymore, even more than his higher-ups, seems unfazed by the job ahead of him. With a mixture of modesty and bravado, he calls EW "a work in progress" and admits his ultimate goal "is to give the magazine the sophistication and glossiness of a monthly with the timeliness and effervescence of a weekly." Is this a little saber-rattling at Vanity Fair, which Seymore blithely call "People for snobs"? "Let's make Entertainment Weekly the most authoritative, entertaining and inescapable magazine about pop culture in America."You can run from the Hunting Bear, but you can't hide.

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Magazine Hot List 1992: Highlights

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