BAUER Publications is making drastic cuts to the ailing Life & Style in the hopes it can save the patient.
In the latest shake-up, Bauer has axed Life & Style Publisher Maria Padova and the mag’s entire six-person advertising and marketing staff.
This round of ousters follows the departure in October of Donna Armstrong as Life & Style editor. She was replaced by Dan Wakeford.
In Touch Publisher Mark Oltarsh will become publisher of both titles, which will now be part of a newly named Bauer Entertainment Group.
While In Touch seems to be the stronger of the two titles, it isn’t out of the woods, either.
In a brutal climate for celebrity magazines, both have apparently had problems delivering on the circulation promises they made to advertisers.
And so, for the second January in a row, both magazines are lowering the number of magazines they promise to deliver each week.
Life & Style will slash its rate base by 27 percent to 400,000 from 550,000, while In Touch will trim its rate base by 20 percent to 800,000 from 1 million.
Said a Bauer p.r. official: “Bauer has traditionally sold our advertising pages in groups. . .
“As the celebrity weekly category heated up, we decided to sell the In Touch and Life & Style brands individually, with separate staffs. We’ve since determined that it makes more sense strategically to combine our efforts and sell the celebrity weeklies collectively once again as the Bauer Entertainment Group.”
Same Time
The worldwide editions of Time magazine are being consolidated.
When it’s over, the various overseas editions of Time will be edited largely out of New York, and to a lesser extent, out of Hong Kong, insiders said.
The move ef fectively ends a decades-old tra dition of major editing taking place in London.
The South Pa cific edition that’s edited out of Syd ney, Australia, will cease at year-end, and will get the same editorial content as the Asian edition.
The edition that goes to Europe, the Middle East and Africa – called Time Atlo – will begin looking a lot more like the Time Asia edition, sources said.
To be sure, those two editions will not be completely identical. Large portions of the editorial will be the same, however local stories can be inserted occasionally.
The changes mean that portions of the staff in London and Hong Kong will disappear.
Tsunami survivor Michael Elliott, already editor of Time International, will continue to oversee the international editions from New York.
Nine Aussie journalists who got the ax received the news in a conference call earlier this week.
“They told the journalists they are going and that our edition is closing down,” Time Australia Editor Steve Waterson told the Daily Telegraph in Sydney.
“Time’s international edition that goes through Europe and Asia, that will be brought down here, but basically we won’t be producing it in Sydney anymore,” he said.
Despite the cuts to the editorial staff, the 30-strong sales and subscriptions departments will remain in Australia, he said.
Time Managing Editor Rick Stengel is worried about commenting on specific cuts, in part due to local laws.
In Britain, for example, labor laws require a 30-day waiting period before cutbacks can take place.
The rumor mill also has it that in addition to major job cuts in London, Time bureaus in Jerusalem, Berlin, and even Los Angeles will be closed.
Said a Time spokeswoman: “As part of its continuing process of aligning costs and operations. . . Time International is proposing to consolidate some editorial functions in New York, where the editor of Time Inter national has been based since 2006. We will continue to maintain editorial services in London and Hong Kong. . .[but] we have decided to cease publishing a separate editorial prod uct for the South Pacific region, which will now be served by our Asian edition.”
It’s Britney
Cindi Leive is going to one-up the celebrity weeklies with the January issue of Glamour, which will feature Britney Spears on the cover.
This ends a bit of a paparazzi mystery: Ever since Spears was spotted heading to a photo shoot with lensman Patrick Demarchelier in early September, there has been speculation that she was going to land on the cover a Condé Nast title.
But Vogue editrix Anna Wintour quickly put a stake through the rumor that the pop tart would be appearing on the cover of Vogue.
Instead, Leive con firmed yesterday that it is indeed Glamour that will be running the Demarchelier snaps.
It marks Spears’ first Glamour cover since January 2003, when a far more marketable Britney Spears was being hailed as one of Glamour’s Women of the Year.
That was long before the infamous meltdowns and rehab stints that ended with her being stripped of custody of her two young sons.
Now she’s attempting to restart her career with a new album, “Circus,” that debuts Dec. 2 – the same day the Glamour cover hits newsstands.
“She’s someone who is coming out of a pretty dark time and everyone is wondering if she’ll be able to pull out of the tailspin,” said Leive.
Glamour, which experienced a 9.2 percent drop in newsstand sales in the first half of the year, is also hoping it hype single-copy sales with the cover.
The mag has upped its print run and worked out an exclusive deal with Wal-Mart that allows readers who buy a copy of Glamour at the retail chain to download a single from her heavily hyped new album.
“I think readers feel she deserves a comeback,” said Leive. keith.kelly@nypost.com