The media food fight has gone digital.
Before Meredith Corp. surprised the media world by jumping into the food category with a new Web site, a new magazine and the purchase of EatingWell, it tried to buy the category-leading Web site, Allrecipes.com, from the Readers Digest Association, Media Ink has learned.
Meredith, one source confirms, was one of a number of potential suitors that had approached RDA, which went through a major bankruptcy reorganization in 2010 and more recently saw its CEO replaced as a new board of tech-heavy financial players tossed out the old board.
When those overtures failed, Meredith then negotiated to purchase EatingWell and simultaneously announced earlier this week that it was introducing a brand-new Recipe.com Web site while launching a companion Recipe.com Magazine, which hit newsstands this week.
Family Circle Editor-in-Chief Linda Fears served as the launch editor.
“We had a lot of great food content in our magazines [Better Homes & Gardens, Family Circle] but we didn’t have an anchor food brand,” said spokesman Patrick Taylor of the new strategy.
Officials at both Meredith and RDA said they would not comment on any talks they may have had, due to their respective corporate polices. And rumors continue to swirl that the new board of RDA may yet opt to spin off some properties. None would be more attractive than Allrecipes.com.
For the 27th consecutive month, Allrecipes.com was the top-ranked food site, with 16.8 million unique visitors a month in May, according to comScore. The latest move by Meredith seems clearly designed to tap into the food-centric advertising that has been one of the most secure in media in recent years.
“Everyone is trying to jump on the food bandwagon,” said Food Network Magazine publisher Vicki Wellington. “I don’t know what everyone else is doing, but I’m glad to be a leader.” On the Food Network site yesterday, host and chef Giada De Laurentiis‘ most-requested dish was chicken tetrazzini.
Wellington noted that, in print, she has already stormed past other magazines — including the fast-starting Everyday with Rachael Ray — to become the top-selling food magazine on newsstands. In June, Food Network Magazine launched its first app for $3.99 a month on the iPad.
Through the dark days of the recession, food advertising in the magazine world remained fairly constant at $2.1 billion a year, according to figures from the Publishers Information Bureau for 2009 and 2010.
While the total has fallen somewhat in the early part of 2011 as the rest of the overall industry revived, it is still a lucrative field.
Foodnetwork.com remains a strong No. 2 in the category, with 14.4 million unique monthly visitors, ahead of No. 3, Cooks.com, with 8.6 million uniques.
“I think part of the issue for Meredith is that they are not scaling that well on the Web,” said Jim Spanfeller, an executive who has worked both sides of the print and digital divide. “They have huge reach relative to their magazine competitors but are somewhat of an also-ran online. I assume they are hoping to capture a bit of the Allrecipe.com lightning with their new efforts.”
Spanfeller, who once headed Forbes.com, is now also hoping to cash in on the food boom with his Spanfeller Media Group and its Dailymeal.com Web site, which launched six months ago and has over 1 million unique visitors a month. He said he’s aiming to reach the 5 million to 6 million mark by year-end, which he hopes will be enough to crack the top five food sites on the Web. It would mean closing the gap on No. 4, KitchenDaily.com, and No. 5, Food.com, both with 6.2 million uniques.
At Condé Nast, which closed Gourmet in 2009, the company still seems to be trying to figure out the digital food world. It recently hired Beth-Ann Eason to oversee Epicurious and the Gourmet Live app. As of now, Epicurious is lagging in 15th place, with only 3.5 million unique visitors a month.
Another Condé Nast title, Bon Appetit, is further back in the pack, but recently released numbers saying its small site has grown to 785,305 monthly uniques in May, up 85 percent from a year ago.
“We redesigned the Web site in May, and we expect the numbers to continue to increase exponentially,” insisted spokeswoman Frederika Brookfield.
“I would expect that the category as a whole will only get bigger over the next few years,” said Spanfeller. “Our culture is much more aware of food and nutrition than at any point in our history. This awareness is driving all sorts of information needs and will continue to rise.” kkelly@nypost.com