Attendance was up by 29 percent at the American Magazine Media Conference held in New York this week compared to a year ago — when it was held in San Francisco — jumping from 320 executives and editors, to 392.
Mary Berner, CEO of the MPA, the Association of Magazine Media, said the plan is to keep it in Manhattan next year as well — a departure from the past, when the conferences migrated to a city in a different region each year.
But that doesn’t mean the venue — a converted fruit warehouse on the far West Side of Manhattan near 11th Avenue — met with universal acclaim.
Attendees complained that events were spread over three floors, they had to use an Ally McBeal-style unisex bathroom on the main conference floor, and the main elevator was the original freight elevator.
At one point Tuesday afternoon, attendees were forced to evacuate when a whiff of smoke with the acrid smell of burning rubber began to permeate the hall. It turned out to be from a truck at a nearby construction site.
Joked Berner, “[Condé Nast President] Bob Sauerberg will do anything to get out of appearing on a panel.”
Despite the minimalist setting, Berner insisted that the move to the West Side was not about shaving costs. “It cost about the same” as last year’s venue in San Francisco, she said.
The only celebrity in attendance this year was Alec Baldwin, a last minute add-on who was interviewed by New Yorker Editor-in-Chief David Remnick. While well received, it fell a little short of his last AMC interview in 2006 with then Sen. Barack Obama, who made headlines with his line, “I inhaled — that was the point.”
One of the more heavily attended conferences was the “View from the Top” with CEOs of five different publishing companies.
Joe Ripp, the newcomer who is running Time Inc., gave some of the more memorable one-liners.
In what is now a familiar stump speech, he reminded everyone that it was Time Inc. money that funded the HBO launch, but that in recent years, all the profits were being sent to the parent Time Warner.
Now the company is looking for new revenue streams again. “We’re going to do it all over again,” he said. “Synergy at Time Warner was elusive.”
The moderator, New York Times columnist David Carr, at one point tried to liven up the session by pointing out that Ripp’s two CEO predecessors (Jack Griffin and Laura Lang) were short-timers who were quickly discarded. Snapped Ripp, “And the beauty of it is, I don’t care.”
One question the execs were asked: At what point would magazines get 50 percent of their subscriptions from the digital side? It appears it is a long way off.
David Carey, president of Hearst Magazines — seen as the industry leader in the digital subscription category — said the company has just over 1 million digital subscriptions today, accounting for about 3 percent of the subscription base. “The goal is 10 percent by 2016,” he said.
Tom Harty, the president of the national media group at Meredith, said his company, which includes Better Homes & Gardens and Ladies’ Home Journal, has 2 to 3 percent coming from digital subscriptions, but conceded the subject of home and hearth may not be as readily applicable to tablets.