Jackson
Ho. Ho. Ho.
New Time Inc. CEO Jack Griffin is bringing back the corporate Christmas party, just as he wraps up his first 100 days in office with some major corporate moves.
More important than the party, Griffin plans no end-of-the-year layoffs among the 8,000 employees and is not planning to sell any of the magazine divisions at home or abroad, he told Media Ink.
“There will be no reduction in the workforce,” he said.
And despite swirling rumors that the British IPC division or some other units will be sold off, he said there are no such plans afoot.
“Definitively, we have no plans to divest any of the brands in our stable, either domestically or worldwide,” said Griffin. He said the IPC division “finished up. They had a strong year.” He said he expects a better year next year.
“We’re doing well over $600 million in revenues internationally and we’re going to seek to build on it,” said Griffin.
About 80 of the company’s top sales and marketing people from around the country are going to be in town for an all-day sales meeting today, to learn firsthand about the new corporate lineup, followed by the first corporate Christmas party since 2007.
This year’s bash is going to be held in-house tonight at the Time & Life Building with about 1,200 people expected to turn out. The Time Inc. Singers, comprised of present and past volunteer carolers, will be heralding guests at the cocktail party and one of the SI swimsuit models will be signing autographs.
On Monday, Griffin unveiled his biggest strategic moves to date when he created the first-ever chief marketing officer and chief revenue officer in the company’s history. In so doing, he hopes to replicate some of the success he enjoyed heading Meredith’s national media group before jumping to Time Inc. this fall to succeed Ann Moore, who became chairman.
The change involves promoting insiders.
Stephanie George, an executive vice president, was tapped as chief marketing officer. Paul Caine, who was heading the Style and Entertainment Group that includes Time Inc.’s most profitable title, People, moves up to become a corporate executive vice president and takes on the title of chief revenue officer.
Caine will also continue to head the Style and Entertainment Group. At the same time, Caine will now also oversee the corporate sales function that caters to the 80 biggest advertisers across multiple brands and will handle print and digital sales.
It’s the first time the print and digital sales will be coordinated on a widespread corporate basis at Time Inc. George, who relinquishes corporate sales responsibilities to Caine, is going to be responsible for positioning and will direct a series of initiatives to expand Time Inc.’s capabilities in marketing services.
She’ll head up what were at one time three disparate groups: Time Inc. Content Solu tions, Media Networks Inc. and Targeted Marketing Inc. Grif fin said that the three groups had total revenue of about $100 million a year, but he hopes to expand that greatly.
Big advertisers now devote more money to non-tradi tional marketing services than they do to traditional media outlets, said Griffin.
“Two or three years ago, the lines crossed,” said Griffin. “It is where clients increasingly want to be served.”
Of the iPad and tablets, he said, “I see it over time becoming a very important piece of the business.” He declined to comment on the ongoing talks with Apple to allow subscription sales — rather than the current setup of only allowing single copies to be sold via the iTunes store.
Royalty row
Show me the money.
Ian Halperin, a veteran celebrity author whose book on Michael Jackson turned into an international bestseller when it hit immediately after the singer’s death in July 2009, is locked in a bitter dispute over what he claims is non-payment of royalties with Canadian publisher Pierre Turgeon, president of Transit Publishing.
The small Canadian publisher had inked the deal some months before Jackson’s death.
When Jackson died, the book, eventually titled, “Un masked, the Final Years of Michael Jackson,” became a hot prop erty. Simon & Schuster paid $350,000 for the US rights while the British wing of Simon & Schuster paid $70,000 for the UK rights.
That money was split 50-50 between Transit and Halperin. Pocketbooks, another imprint of S&S, also forwarded another $100,000 for paperback rights that were split between Transit and Halperin.
But Halperin claims that Transit also sold French Canadian rights, English language Canadian rights and rights in France to other publishers and pocketed those royalties totaling $262,000.
Turgeon claims he is holding up future payments because of a libel case in Canada involving a recent Transit-published Halperin book, “Guy Laliberté: the Fabulous Story of the Creator of Cirque du Soleil.”
Apparently the billionaire circus entrepreneur was infuriated by the portions of the book purporting to detail sex and drugs at parties he threw. He tried to halt the book’s publication, but the war of words instead fueled sales, which quickly reached 20,000 copies — a pretty good showing north of the border.
Turgeon said he and his partner, Robert Brouilette, a lawyer and 50 percent owner of the publishing company, now have an agreement in principle to settle the dispute with Laliberté out of court. The agreement calls for the publisher to cease publishing future editions and to have Hal perin make a public apol ogy, Turgeon said.
“That’s totally false,” countered Halperin.
Although the settle ment was reached out of court, Turgeon said that legal bills racked up in the settlement were a staggering $168,000 — which he says he expects Halperin to pay 50 percent of.
The dispute over the Michael Jackson case is now being handled by an arbitrator in Quebec who is scheduled to hear arguments next month. kkelly@nypost.com