Sports Illustrated is relaunching its title aimed at women readers, after a year and a half on the sidelines.
The magazine, dubbed Sports Illustrated for Women, will appear quarterly with a first issue in early March.
The move to revive the magazine comes as parent Time Warner is looking for another year of double digit profits from its Time Inc. book and magazine wing.
The new SI launch looks like one of the few major launches slated to roll out of the nation’s biggest magazine publishing house in 1999.
“We’re going after a slightly younger audience this time,” said Cleary Simpson, of the new title’s aim.
Cleary is publisher of SI for Kids and will serve as publishing director of the new title as well .
She said she is targeting 16 to 34 year olds and will agressively pursue high school and college age athletes. The magazine will cover participatory and spectator sports as well as health/nutrition and gear coverage, she said, but fitness will not play a big role in the editorial mix.
“It’s a sports magazine,” said Simpson. “It won’t be ‘how to get thinner thighs in 30 days.”’
The Post revealed back on Oct. 10 that SI was gearing up to reintroduce the title in 1999 with Sandy Bailey remaining at the helm as editor.
So far, the magazine that is seen as the SI spinoff’s most natural rival, the Conde Nast-owned Women’s Sports & Fitness, welcomes the renewed rivalry.
“We’re delighted about it,” said Women’s Sports & Fitness publisher Suzanne Grimes. “We feel they kind of let us blaze the trail.”
But just because she’s taking the high road, doesn’t mean she won’t take a small poke or two at her rival.”It’s interesting to note that they have a lot smaller circulation this time around,” said Grimes.
Indeed, the original incarnation of the SI women’s title in 1997 had a guaranteed circulation of 500,000; the latest incarnation will promise advertisers that it will have circulation of only 250,000.
“It’s certainly a good time for someone who knows what they are doing to start a sports magazine for women – but I’d have to see some issues before I know what kind of a job they are doing,” said Michael MacCambridge, author of the 1998 paperback “The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine.”
“Just because [the weekly edition of] SI has done a better job of covering women’s sports than their competitors doesn’t mean it’s done as good a job as they can or should do,” added MacCambridge.