AFTER a major redesign and a long stretch of rumors, Time Inc. finally made a move at embattled Entertainment Weekly, bouncing the current managing editor, Rick Tetzeli, upstairs while moving People Executive Editor Jess Cagle into the top post at EW.
Tetzeli was a protégé of Time Inc. Editor-in-Chief John Huey from their days at Fortune. He will move to the corporate offices on the 34th floor to work on special projects.
Tetzeli was still closing this week’s issue Tuesday night, but had a lunch with Cagle today as Time Inc. tried to make a smooth transition.
Unlike Tetzeli, Cagle was seen as a Hollywood insider who was on the original launch team of the magazine in 1990.
The demoralized EW staff had already shouldered a huge portion of the recent 600 person downsizing at Time Inc., losing somewhere close to 30 people from its editorial staff of nearly 120 people.
If nothing else, the move to bring in a new editor should quell the rumors fanned by media Web sites that the company planned to move the magazine into a Web-only platform.
Said Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore, “Time Inc. believes in the future of Entertainment Weekly as a stand-alone weekly print publication with a growing and vibrant Web site.”
But the magazine has struggled in recent years to regain its status as a once hot title. During the slide, its profits declined from more than $50 million to around $10 million last year.
For all of 2008, its ad pages were off by 20.7 percent to 1,223, according to Media Industry Newsletter.