TV talk star Dr. Mehmet Oz revealed the name of his magazine with Hearst — Dr. Oz: The Good Life — at the publishing company’s first-ever magazine “upfront.”
And from what Hearst told advertisers at the Tuesday-night session, it looks like it will be one of the biggest launches since it joined with Oprah Winfrey to launch, O, the Oprah Magazine in 2002.
Some pundits think the Oz play is a bid to shore up the empire now that Oprah’s magazine continues to suffer after she retired from her syndicated talk show to focus on launching her own cable network, OWN.
In the six-month period ended June 30, single-copy sales for O plunged 22.7 percent, to 346,799. Ad sales continued to erode, dropping 18.4 percent in the first nine months of the year, to 692.41 ad pages, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.
Once the second-most profitable magazine in the Hearst empire, the joint venture with Winfrey’s Harpo Productions has been supplanted by Elle.
Oz sat for a Q&A with Ellen Levine, the Hearst editorial director, and explained the title this way: “In almost everything I do, I notice women … desperately craving insights into the good life.”
Oz has said he wants it to be a lifestyle magazine, covering food, life, relationships, diet and body information. Among the topics he said he wanted to delve into was why only 25 percent of women reach orgasm.
Other less salacious details Hearst shared with advertisers include the official sale date of Feb. 4.
The magazine plans to mail 450,000 copies to subscribers and distribute 350,000 copies to newsstands, much as it did with its other successful launches in recent years, The Food Network Magazine and HGTV. The cover price is going to be $3.99.