Business

Kicking back at Newsweek

The partners behind Newsweek Daily Beast Company appear to be holding down the flow of red ink this summer by cutting back on the number of Newsweek issues.

This past Monday started a dark week for the newsweekly. It now appears that it will be one of four dark weeks for the summer — two more than Tina Brown planned.

The original editorial calendar showed only one dark week, surrounding the July 4 weekend.

Staffers now have been told that they will not have to work the week of July 18-22 since no issue will appear on July 25. They also can spend a little extra time at the beach the week of Aug. 15-19, since there will now be no issue on Aug. 22.

The company admits it will be dark for four weeks, but said that total is only one above its original plan.

Brown was headed out of the country on a business trip and could not be reached at presstime.

Newsweek lost $40 million in the two years before it was divested in August 2010 by the Washington Post Co. for $1 to stereo equipment mogul Sidney Harman. Harman had said he was prepared to spend up to $40 million over the next few years to save the iconic title — but then the 92-year-old patron died in April of a fast-spreading cancer.

His wife, former Rep. Jane Harman, assumed his seat on the board of the joint venture, which was formed with Barry Diller‘s IAC/InterActiveCorp.

But pledging renewed support doesn’t translate into automatic gains on Madison Avenue.

Through the June 14 issue, Newsweek saw its ad page sales in 2011 fall 23 percent, to 299.03 pages, from 388.15 pages over the same period a year earlier, according to Media Industry Newsletter.

Time magazine is also, uncharacteristically, going dark for a week in August. The magazine normally only goes dark after its Person of the Year issue at the end of December.

This year, it will still end up publishing 51 issues since, like Newsweek, it cranked out a special issue on the Royal Wedding and a special issue on the killing of Osama bin Laden. Time is up 10.7 percent in ad pages to 630 pages — more than double the haul of Newsweek.

Newsweek pub lisher Ray Chelstowski pointed out that the 23 percent decline is lower than when the maga zine rolled out its March rede sign, saying that this is “an other indicator that our busi ness is moving in the right direction.”

Grimes gone

The promotion last week of Dan Lagani to president of Reader’s Digest North America also spelled the departure of Suzanne Grimes, president of lifestyle communities and Canada.

Grimes had been a close ally of Mary Berner, the CEO notorious for her morale-boosting staff stunts and dares. The clique of former executives from Condé Nast and Fairchild had been dubbed “Mary’s Mafia” by many insiders. Grimes was the last of the execs remaining.

Berner had worked with Grimes at TV Guide and then recruited her from Condé Nast after Berner was tapped to be Reader’s Digest Association CEO when Ripplewood Holdings took the company private.

Ripplewood lost its investment in the publishing concern’s August 2009 pre-packaged bankruptcy. However, Berner didn’t lose her CEO job until this year, following the installation of a new board of directors.

Initially, Grimes appeared to survive the tumult, but quietly exited last week after Lagani, who was running the flagship magazine, moved up to the newly created job.

AMI/RDA

Now that American Media’s talks with Apollo Management about a potential takeover have collapsed, sources say AMI CEO David Pecker may be setting his sights on a back-shop merger with RDA. Both companies have emerged from pre-packaged Chapter 11 filings in the past year, but both face tough challenges with their franchise print magazines.

When queried on potential talks with AMI, a spokeswoman said, “RDA does not comment on market rumor or speculation.”

AMI is handling all the back-shop operations for Playboy and the direct response subscriptions for TV Guide and Bloomberg LP. Regarding the possibility of RDA taking over back-shop operations, a spokeswoman said, “We are aggressively pursuing all publishers.”

Segall redux

Richard Beckman, CEO of Prometheus Global Media, reversed course and brought back Lynne Segall to be the new senior vice president and publisher of The Hollywood Reporter.

She spent more than a decade at THR before leaving for the Web world and the company that is producing HollywoodLife.com, the Web site edited by Bonnie Fuller.

Segall replaces Lori Burgess, who was one of the first high-profile hires Beckman made before he set the Hollywood trade on the risky course of trying to become a consumer/trade hybrid publication. kkelly@nypost.com