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In a startling turn, German-owned media giant Bauer Publishing, which owns In Touch and Woman’s World here, is set to unleash three new magazines in the United States market this fall.
All three titles are hoping to carve a niche on the newsstand, where most other publishers are struggling. The launches are decidedly market contrarian moves. They mark one of the more ambitious magazine launch efforts by any major publisher in five years.
“We know how to bring out new products and we know how to find new readers,” said Ian Scott, president of Bauer’s advertising sales. Unlike many American publishers, which derive most of their revenue from ads, Bauer relies predominantly on newsstand sales for profits. With its editorial offices in New Jersey, it also is famous for publishing its magazines on a low-cost basis.
The most ambitious launch is going to be a new weekly called Closer, which is being overseen by new Editor-in-Chief Annabel Vered, a Bauer staffer who has been working on a prototype for over a year.
Vered said Closer will be “a hybrid of a celebrity weekly and women’s service magazine that celebrates the stars the readers and I have grown up with and love.”
In a move sure to create chaos on the newsstand — and simultaneously get attention — Bauer plans to distribute 2 million copies of the debut issue with a rock-bottom price of 25 cents when it launches in November.
Thereafter the price will jump to $3.99.
Although Bauer already owns several European editions of a magazine called Closer (pictured below) — published in Britain and Germany by Bauer and in France via licensee Mondadori — Scott insists that the American version with service journalism in the mix will differ from the European counterparts that are almost entirely celebrity-oriented.
Two other magazines are also about to move from the drawing boards to publication in the second half.
Girl’s World will launch in October at $4.99 a copy with plans to publish seven times a year, aimed at the ’tween market of girls aged six to 10 years old.
It will be overseen by Marisa Sandora as editor-in-chief and will be hiring its own staff.
The company is also launching Celebrations, which will be spun out of Woman’s World, which overtook People as the top selling weekly on American newsstands with single copy sales of 1,143,985 in the latest report from the Alliance for Audited Media.
People Soft
People, which used to routinely sell 1.4 million copies a week in its glory days, was down to 971,668 in the most recent six-month reporting period ended this past Dec. 31, according to the AAM.
People still has an overall circulation lead thanks to 2,665,965 subscriptions per week, for a total circ of 3.6 million. Woman’s World, which eschews most subscription sales as part of its business model, has a total circulation of 1.256,746.
Scott said Celebrations will come out six times a year around holiday times such as Thanksgiving or Memorial Day and will be overseen by Stephanie Saible, who is already overseeing Woman’s World — a job she will keep. Celebrations will carry a cover price of $4.99 and will launch in August.
ESPN mag exit
Gary Hoenig, the man who hatched the idea to launch ESPN The Magazine in the mid-1990s and shepherded it through its developmental years at Hearst, was given the old heave-ho by ESPN yesterday, according to Deadspin.com.
At the time of his ouster, he was the general manager and editorial director and was one of the few editorial people still based in New York.
Most of the edit staff was frog marched to Bristol, Conn., two years ago as part of a move by ESPN the network to exert greater control and tie its content closer to the cable network’s content.
While in New York, the magazine exercised a wide degree of autonomy.
Despite his role as chief advocate and employee No. 1, his 16+year career had its ups and downs at the magazine.
It was not until Walt Disney oversaw the magazine project and took it out of Hearst’s hands in 1998 that the magazine finally moved from development stage with a sporadic number of issues with a couple of hundred thosuand circulation to a full-blown launch.
Hearst is a 20 percent owner of ESPN with Disney holding 80 percent. But ESPN decided to raid its then powerful rival at Time Inc.’s Sports Illustrated for the new Editor-in-Chief John Papanek, not Hoenig.
In the earliest days, the rivalry with SI for talent was fierce and intense. Hoenig settled in as executive editor, and finally in 2003 ascended to the editor-in-chief title.
In 2008, he handed that job to Gary Belsky and became a general manager and editorial director, working on new digital initiatives and acquisitions.
Hoenig had enough juice to stay behind in New York City, one of the few editorial side people allowed to keep an office in the Big Apple when the rest of the staff moved.
Belsky and dozen other staffers quit rather than make the move, and Chad Millman replaced him as chief editor. While its overall circulation has held steady around 2.1 million, the more profitable newsstand portion has plunged by double digits to just over 10,000.
With ESPN network in the midst of another one of its periodic purges of several hundred people, Hoenig was among those who were out.
“All they are doing is salary dumps,” said one source.
Hoenig did not return a call seeking comment. ESPN also had not commented by presstime.
Finke is back
In the battle of the Tinseltown Tattlers, it appears Nikki Finke, founder of the Deadline Hollywood site, has won the latest round against her archrival, Sharon Waxman at The Wrap.
Despite Waxman’s report last week that Finke was fired by owner Jay Penske, Finke was back blogging on her site over the weekend, including news yesterday that News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch and his wife Wendi Deng were planning to divorce.
Last Sunday, Waxman was reporting that Finke was fired by owner Penske.
Reached earlier this week to see if she was indeed “back,” Finke said, “I never left, so how can I return?”
She said she was originally planning to take her first vacation in four years starting on June 3, but a staffer had a death in the family, she said, and so she returned to editing and writing.
“So my next hoped for vacation’s start date is Monday, June 17,” she said.
She is still declining to comment on her relationship with Penske. Some sources said he has been driven crazy by Finke since he purchased her web site in 2009. Last year, Penske bought Variety, a long established and larger publication that Finke had routinely tilted against over the years in the battle for Hollywood scoops. Some were saying that it was a source of friction between the two.
When the Waxman story broke, Penske said via a spokesman that he had a long-term contract with Finke and that he intended to honor it. He also said he was exploring legal action against The Wrap and demanded the story be taken down from the Wrap’s web site.