Controlled circulation TV

Michael Prentice, a columnist in the Ottawa Business Journal, draws an analogy with newspaper-carried controlled circulation magazines to illuminate the current confusing battle between TV networks and cable companies over who pays what to whom. (You will probably have seen the battling full-page newspaper ads and TV commercials that shed more heat than light.)

Prentice puts it succinctly that "You end up paying CTV to deliver CTV's product to CTV's customers? Surely it should be the other way around?"

For years, TV companies were only too happy for cable companies to deliver their signals at no cost. More viewers meant higher advertising rates for the TV companies. They still do.

An example of how things usually work, only in the print realm: Ottawa Magazine, a glossy periodical, pays the Ottawa Citizen thousands per issue to distribute the magazine free with the newspaper. This represents added value for Citizen readers, for which the Citizen gets extra revenue. Yet Ottawa Magazine finds the cost worthwhile since it's cheaper than using Canada Post, says publisher Dianne Wing.

Can focussing on "lifetime value" of subscriptions save magazines?

Dependency on advertisers has for a longtime been the Achilles heel of magazine publishing, both consumer and b2b. As Howard Gossage, the iconoclastic commentator on advertising, said the readers lost control of their magazines the minute that publishers stopped raising the subscription price to cover the cost of production. As a result, advertisers inevitably have for a long times subsidized readers, calling the tune because they pay the piper.

A just-published study by the management consulting firm A T Kearney says that, as readership has declined, magazines should be rethinking the model whereby they have been focussed on the advertisers' needs while letting readers pay next to nothing for subscriptions. They suggest publishers can save their industry by pursuing a lifetime value model (LTV) and becoming less dependent on advertising.

The study mostly concentrates on the problems of sub-agents in the U.S. selling cut-price subscriptions in order to meet circulation targets whereas, in Canada, agency-sold subs are declining in importance and magazines don't guarantee rate bases. And the authors seems to think that publishers don't consider revenue sources such as brand extension, licensing and associated product sales. They do, plus how to do multi-platform selling and linking print and web publishing and deriving income from both. 

The study may be food for thought about seeking the maximum revenue from consumers rather than seeking readership at any price. I'd be interested to hear back from people out there who have a view about whether we can rebalance our publishing model to have the end user pay the freight.

B2B association American Business Media reinvents itself

Networking and education are top priorities for a new strategic plan unveiled by American Business Media (ABM), the business-to-business magazine trade association. It is pursuing that, plus government policy and industry standards, research for member publishers and research to provide data for advertisers, according to a report in MediaDailyNews. It will also pursue new partnerships with other trade associations, more regional events, and new digital resources.

The two research initiatives will serve related functions. The first -- "research to know" -- will roll out new data-delivery tools to provide users with real-time business intelligence, including restructuring the Business Information Network reports. The second, "research to show," aims to provide publishers with data that demonstrates the effectiveness of B2B publications and digital assets as advertising platforms.

Playboy being pursued by two buyers

Two buyers are contending for Playboy magazine. Playboy Enterprises Inc., publishers of the iconic, but troubled, title is being pursued by Iconix Brand Group and a group of private investors led by Jim Griffiths, Playboy's former entertainment president, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times. The idea is to pay perhaps $300 million and take the company private.

From dominance in the men's market through the 60s and 70s, Playboy has been slipping, battered by ready availability of online soft and not-so-soft porn. Its stock fell to just above $1 a share last fall and the magazine recently reduced its guaranteed rate base to 1.5 million from 2.6 million. Christie Hefner, founder Hugh Hefner's daughter, left as CEO last spring.

News of the takeovers drove up Playboy stock 42% yesterday from $1.21 to $4 07. But the New York Post expressed scepticism that any deal is imminent:

One potential stumbling block is the whim of 83-year-old Hugh Hefner, who controls 70 percent of Playboy's stock.The legendary founder is looking for a premium as he tries to pay off debt and finance his lavish lifestyle while at the same time keeping his pioneering porn publication alive.

Newspapers, but not magazines exempted from Ontario HST

[This post has been updated] The announcement by the government of Ontario on Thursday that it would now exempt newspaper subscriptions from the new 13% harmonized sales tax (HST) means that magazines are alone among print publications will face an effective 8% increase in taxation come June 2010. Or, to put it another way, magazine buyers will pay 13% tax (5% GST + 8% PST, combined) while newspaper buyers will pay no tax at all. 

"We're just gobsmacked," Mark Jamison, chief executive officer of Magazines Canada told the Toronto Star. "I'm quite certain that we will lose magazines. This will be the last straw. This came as a total shock because we made the same economic and cultural arguments ... as newspapers."

This decision is both arbitrary and profoundly unfair as well as crassly political. Newspapers compete in the same marketplace in Ontario for subscription and advertising revenue, and magazines are suffering the same economic impacts from the recession as newspapers. This  seems to have made no difference. 

[Update: Premier Dalton McGuinty said today that there will be no more exemptions and that "we have all but nailed this down".]

The decision was designed to curry favour with the voters in the Tim Hortons across the country, freeing up their morning coffee and single copy newspaper purchases from tax. It will have much wider implications, since it apparently applies to home-delivered newspaper subscriptions as well. 

So we have the prospect of enormous chain monopolies such as CanWest, Quebecor and Torstar (who account for most of the daily and community newspapers in Canada) being given tax relief while magazines (some from large companies, but many, many of which are small, independents) are  hit hard. 
It only rubs salt in the wound that the spokesman for newspapers preened: "It's a really good example of government listening."

As far as we can see, it is selective listening at best. What possible justification can it be to exempt newspapers and not exempt magazines? Every publisher of every little magazine, large and small, needs to get on the phone right now to Queen's Park and their MPP and demand that this anomaly be made right.

Related posts:

• Ontario HST on magazines goes ahead, but subs prepaid before July 1, 2010 are exempt
• Ontario magazine publishers seem resigned to HST
• Harmonized Ontario tax confirmed; magazines to take a hit

The wayback machine

From time to time we look back to see what was happening in the world of Canadian magazines. 

A year ago

• Gardening Life: "there will never be another magazine started to take its place"
• Canadian firms win big at custom publishing awards
• Three Canadian mags win big at 28th annual IRMA awards
• Wish and Gardening Life closed by St. Joseph
• Maclean's editor Whyte on book tour to resuscitate Hearst's reputation
• Magazines Canada hires ad agency to pitch to ad agencies and advertisers
• Fulford says when people talk about the death of print, they don't mean magazines

Two years ago

• Quebecor World stock down 41% in a week, facing refinancing challenge
• Torstar takes the long view with transition at Metroland
• Taddle Creek to war against apostrophe abuse
• Stuffy is out, says Reeves; that's why House & Garden folded
• Split run cover pricing being used to evade dollar parity for magazines
• Let's explore the "day old bread" approach to selling single copies

Three years ago

• Donna Clark has resigned from St. Joseph Media
• Building a buzz in more ways than one, Blackfly takes a bite out of Ontario 
• This magazine celebrates 40 years of feisty independence 
• Shelley Ambrose named Walrus publisher
• New crop whines from universities that boycotted Maclean's
• Shameless weighs in on slurs against Stronach
  

Partnership on Munsch book nets $20,000 so far for charity

A little while ago, we posted here about an 8-year-old grade 4 student from Guelph who published a book called Braids by renowned children's author Robert Munsch, with all proceeds going to a charity on behalf of an orphans' home in Kenya. It was being marketed in partnership with New Internationalist, an independent magazine renowned for its campaigning stance on a range of world issues

Well, Taya Kendall's venture has, in five months, sold more than $20,000 worth of books and the first run is expected to top $35,000. A good story, for her, for the orphans and for the magazine that's helping her.

Magazine world view: Obama cover bump; Newsweek shrinks; trouble at Twitter; Conde's sales down; Playboy for sale?

• Obama covers deliver newsstand bump for Rodale (Folio:) 
• Newsweek to cut a dozen staffers (Folio:) 
• Editors hit back in Monbiot backlash (Jon Slattery) 
• Condé Nast's ad pages drop more than 30 percent this year  (paidContent)
• Trouble at Twitter: U.S. visitors down 8 percent in October (TechCrunch) 
• Playboy talking to Iconix about possible sale (paidContent)

Why I won't sign the Transcontinental contract, by Kim Pittaway

A post by Kim Pittaway on the site Bad Writing Contracts is both brave and thought-provoking, and by rights should provoke some reconsideration by Transcontinental Media about the master contract it is imposing on freelancers. It's headed "Why I won't sign the Transcontinental contract".

Pittaway, former editor-in-chief and managing editor of Chatelaine magazine and past president of the National Magazine Award Foundation, has been a frequent contributor to Transcon magazines. Here is what she says:

I’ve had great working relationships with editors at More and Homemaker’s, and know and respect many others who work for Transcontinental–which is why I was so deeply disappointed by this new contract, one which conveys a fundamental disrespect for the creators who contribute so much to the success of Transcon’s publications.

Why does this contract seem disrespectful to me?

• Because it grabs a whole bundle of new rights with little or no additional fee. I know that print publications are struggling to find new revenue streams. I get that the media mix is shifting. And I’m eager to work with editors and publishers to find new ways to reach readers. But publishers already get a bargain on the print rights they purchase from copyright holders–those rates haven’t gone up in over 30 years. And to now say you’re taking a whole whack of new rights for the same bargain-basement rate is simply unfair. I own those rights on my work. And I choose not to sell them to you at that low rate.
• Because it was imposed with no consultation with writers. One day, I had a great working relationship with my editors, was juggling three or four assignments, and all was right with the world. Oh–and I’d just garnered Transcon mags two National Magazine Award nominations. The next day, I was told that if I didn’t sign the contract as is, no changes, that I wouldn’t be working for them any longer.
• Because it is a sign-once, live-with-it-forever contract. This contract applies to my work with Transcon in perpetuity and applies to all work for all Transcon properties. So Transcon is locking in the rights they want at a point when suppliers are vulnerable because of the current economic situation, and preventing writers from renegotiating the contract at any point in the future. Who in their right mind signs a contract that applies forever?

I’m mystified by this contract–perhaps because I have difficulty believing that the good folks I know at Transcon actually intended to send such a negative message with it. Maybe they’re getting bad legal advice. I hope that’s the reason. But even more than that, I hope we’re able to engage in a constructive conversation to change it. Because a bad contract is bad for writers, it’s tough on editors and it’s ultimately bad for magazines and their readers. And that’s a shame, for all of us.

Related posts:

• Boycott of Transcontinental Media titles now promoted by new website
•  Derek Finkle of Canadian Writers Group responds to Marcoux statements
• Transcontinental contract is misunderstood, says senior executive
• Transcontinental Media said to be prepared to modify controversial freelance contract
• Transcon being pressed by industry reps to change proposed freelance contract
• Freelancers dismayed by Transcon’s new “take it or leave it” freelance contract

Mother Earth News pioneers paperless mail renewals

Mother Earth News will be the first magazine to deliver paperless renewal notices to its subscribers via Zumbox, a Web-based platform that delivers paperless mail using U.S. street addresses, according to a story in Audience Development.

Subscribers to the sustainable lifestyle title will be given the option to receive their renewal notices as well as renew their subscriptions directly from their “Zumbox,” which is accessible via Zumbox.com. Unlike e-mail, there is a corresponding Zumbox—a digital mailbox—for every U.S. street address, which enables postal mail to be sent as digital files and received online with no paper or scanning. It also differs from e-mail because, according to the company, it is spam-free and publishers can use information they already have on file as opposed to having to collect e-mail addresses.

“In addition to clearly reducing environmental impact, Zumbox represents a powerful way for us to communicate with our subscribers,” Bryan Welch, publisher and editorial director, Mother Earth News, said in a statement. “Our audience has already started to embrace this paperless postal system, which could become another content distribution channel for us as well.”

Cost savings so far are negligible, since renewals are still being mailed conventionally, said production and circulation manager Bob Cucciniello. So far 120 subscribers have elected to receive the Zumbox renewal notices.

“Even if it doesn’t turn out to be a popular option for subscribers, it still represents another way that Mother Earth News is allowing its subscribers to become more green,” he said. “It allows them to take a more active role in the partnership for a better environment.”

The long and winding masthead of The New Yorker

One of the (many) quirks of The New Yorker magazine is that it doesn't publish a masthead. The New York Observer has done its best to remedy that by assembling a list of its own, and it is (by today's standards) huge.

We assembled the list through interviews with staffers and contributors notes in back copies and online. Keep in mind that because of the unique, internal logic of the magazine, job titles are a strange thing—someone who may be a staff writer may have only contributed a single piece in the last few years.

Editor David Remnick makes no apologies:

“In order to do what we do, we need a sizable staff. We don’t publish 10 issues a year, or 12 issues a year. We publish 46.

“If The New Yorker is going to be worthy of the name and achieve a level of prose or accuracy or depth, or if it’s going to give the reporters or writers the time they need to achieve what I hope we can achieve, we can’t do it with a minuscule staff.”

You can say that again.

Working at home is not perfect...and it's not easy

Freelance writer (and teacher) Diane Peters has a wise article in the December issue of Today's Parent magazine, setting the record straight for women who think working at home means they can make a decent living and keep everything spotless, including themselves. She addresses each of several illusions and starts off with a telling anecdote:

All I had to do was make one super-quick work-related phone call. Neither my husband nor my part-time sitter was around, so I gave my 10-month-old daughter a snack and a toy, and sat her on the floor of my home office. I dialed the number; I got my guy. While I asked him my one question, my daughter crawled under the desk and deftly snapped off my phone’s power bar.

This is what it’s really like to be a parent who works at home.

Neilsen said to be selling Mediaweek, Billboard, Adweek and The Hollywood Reporter

Neilsen Business Media is reportedly selling Mediaweek, Billboard, Brandweek, Adweek and The Holywood Reporter to News Communications Inc., according to a post on The Wrap. The papers -- part of a stable of 41 trade titles in the Neilsen business media division -- have been on the market since last year. 

News Communications Inc. is owned by James Finkelstein, who was the founder of the National Law Journal (later sold to American Lawyer Media Inc.)

What if Rupert Murdoch is right about Google?

For a man who doesn't use e-mail, or a computer, media magnate Rupert Murdoch sure gets a lot of attention paid to his musings and pronouncements about the online world. This week's statement that he is considering removing his Wall Street Journal, Barron's and other publications from Google, is no different. According to a post by blogger Sean Blanda, we should consider whether Murdoch may be right, rather than considering Google invincible.

"Even when he makes statements that seem to expose his one-dimensional knowledge of the online content world, publishers would be wise to sit up and listen when Murdoch exposes his strategy."

He agrees with Murdoch's contention that he'd rather have fewer customers who pay than a huge number of visitors who don't. As a measure of success, revenue is much more reliable than visits to an online site.

Legion magazine launches postcard campaign to send messages to those serving in Afghanistan

Legion magazine launched a postcard-for-the-troops campaign last week, by which its readers can send messages to soldiers serving in Afghanistan. It includes three different cards, individually tipped on random newsstand copies of the November-December issue; subscribers get all three bound into their copies.

Weary words

A post on the New York Times website lists some overused or misused words and phrases which should be give a rest:

• famously 
• frisson
• trope
• epicenter
• besotted
• battling cancer
• lambaste

Any additions?

British Observer Sunday paper cuts three of its weekly magazines

The Observer, the Sunday paper of the Guardian News and Media Group in Britain is dropping three of its themed weekly magazines after a "strategic review". The review had led to some speculation that the money-losing paper itself might be closed (which management always denied). But in the end, Observer Music Monthly, Sport Monthly and Observer Women were cut.This, according to a story in Marketing Week.

The newspaper will now have four weekly sections – news, sport, an expanded review section and the weekly Observer magazine. Business coverage will be embraced by the main section of the publication.

Editor of Allergic Living says Chatelaine article about peanuts was "insensitive" and wrong

Gwen Smith, the editor of Allergic Living magazine (right, below), has taken serious umbrage at an article in the December issue of Chatelaine that questions the ban on peanut products in schools.

In an opinion post on cbc.ca, she calls the article by freelancer writer Patricia Pearson -- featured on the cover as "The Making of the Peanut Allergy Myth" -- "insensitive", "cynical" and "snide".

In the telling, the writer skewers the hard-won accommodations in schools to protect food-allergic children, confuses facts and statistics, and never pauses to speak to a principal or a parent of a child who has experienced anaphylaxis, the most serious form of allergic reaction.

She goes on...

But what is disturbing is not just Ms. Pearson's insensitivity to a diagnosed medical condition.

It is that this article ran in Chatelaine, the warm, sensitive, loyal best friend to Canadian women and their children....

In Canada, getting taken down in Chatelaine is as close as it gets to being kneecapped by Oprah.

She notes that Chatelaine editor Maryam Sanati not only backs up her freelance writer, by "perpetuating her writer's misinformed assumption that the dramatic rise in food allergies is a myth."

Smith was at one time editor-in-chief of Elm Street magazine and assistant managing editor at Maclean's and the Globe and Mail, and started Allergic Living in part because of her own allergies to soy, shellfish and peanuts. The current issue of Allergic Living features on its cover stories about monitoring allergic children in schools and dairy allergies in schools.

Metropolitan Home magazine to close

[This post has been updated] The latest casualty among U.S. magazines is the shelter title Metropolitan Home. According to a blog posting by Ad Age media columnist Simon Dumenco, a press release from Hachette Fillipacchi, is announcing that December will be the magazine's last issue. 

[Update: According to a story in Folio: the company's efforts will be concentrated on Elle Decor, instead. The editorial team, editor-in-chief Donna Warner and 12 other editorial staffers are losing their jobs. The magazine's website will essentially disappear, subsumed under the Elle Decor brand.

Alain Lemarchand, president and CEO, made the announcement this morning in a release, which said that resources will be applied to Elle Decor instead. Lemarchand said Elle Decor is the ad-page leader in the U.S. When contacted, a spokesperson said Metropolitan Home was third in its category.

Met Home, which started out as a hip, youthful alternative to such heavy hitters as House & Garden magazine, has a rate base of 550,000. Its newsstand has shrunk from 9.5% to 7.6%, or about 42,000 single copy sales. Ad pages have shrunk about 33% over the past year, or about 466 pages.]

Flare fashionista Lisa Tant's busy, busy life

Lisa Tant, the editor-in-chief of Flare, the fashion magazine from Rogers, was home for dinner only 5 times last month. This, among other things, we learn from her blog posting about her  "typical day", which isn't. She compares herself to her father, who worked to the clock and hated his job. 

I’m out a minimum of three nights a week attending everything from new product launches to fashion shows to black tie dinners. In October (one of my busiest months) I was home for dinner a grand total of five nights – including weekends. That’s a great schedule for a Type A personality like me, but not so good if you love to spend time with family and friends. The idea of going to a movie mid-week sounds like fun – I can’t remember the last time I did that!

[Pic above shows Tant at the P&G Beauty Awards with Joeffer Caoc (where FLARE’s Elizabeth Cabral won Best Fashion Editor) -- photo by George Pimentel]

Quote, unquote: Loss leader economics means it's about making the little guys pay

Outraged book publishers and booksellers are making exaggerated claims about how the discounts will devalue books and wreck the industry. But they’re right about one thing. The real competition in this price war is not between Wal-Mart and Amazon but between those behemoths and everyone else—and the damage everyone else is incurring is deliberate, not collateral. Wal-Mart and Amazon have figured out how to fight a price war and win: make sure someone else takes the blows.

-- James Suurowiecki in The New Yorker, trying to explain why Wal-Mart and Amazon are in a price war

Large, integrated ad deals paying off for some U.S. magazine publishers

U.S. Magazine publishers are seeing their efforts to sell large, integrated deals paying off, according to a story in MediaWeek. And it is being evidenced in a small ad revenue increase in the 4th quarter.

For instance, Food & Wine holds its Classic event in Aspen and has already signed 8 sponsors, seven months ahead of the event. Publisher Christina Grdovic attributed it to the ability to extend the advertisers' message beyond the event itself:

“The trend for us is more, large integrated deals,” she said. “It’s advertisers talking about bundling print, digital and something else.”

MaryAnn Bekkedahl, vp, group publisher for Rodale said that the company is actually thinking about growth again.

The health and fitness publisher is looking to continue that growth in 2010. Its working to sew up sponsorships of three programs that would involve ads in multiple titles, a sign of confidence that advertisers are ready to spend if the idea is right.

Magazine world view: Murdoch blocks; PR ed steps down; Last Lite; publishers' bad habits

• Rupert Murdoch may block Google's search engine (Guardian)
• Philip Gourevitch stepping down as editor of The Paris Review (New York Observer)
• Ailing Condé looks to China for growth  (New York Post)
• Wallpaper* opens design supermarket in Milan (Dexigner Design Portal)
• U.K. journalism training body sets same exam, two months in a row (Guardian) 
• London Lite will close Friday 13th (Brand Republic)
• Publishers’ bad habits, now glutting the iPhone (Publetariat)
• E-book formats -- where are they now and where are they going? (Publetariat)

Swerve to success: Calgary weekly celebrates 5 years of doing things its own way

It's something of a triumph of the unlikely as Swerve magazine -- the funky supplement to the Calgary Herald -- has just marked its fifth anniversary.

The award-winning magazine is, unquestionably, editor Shelley Youngblut's creation and to her goes a good deal of the credit not only for its longevity but for its excellence. After all, newspapers have traditionally had TV and listings guides that were stubbornly mediocre and only someone with vision and energy can take such a thing up several levels, injecting it with a true magazine, story-telling sensibility. It slugs itself "fun listings" & "Calgary, inside and out" and does its best to live up to the billing.

The excellence has been recognized by peers, as when last year Youngblut won the lifetime achievement award from the Western Magazine Awards in the same year that one article in Swerve (Chris Koentges memoir of his mother, Helen) won four magazine awards (two in the nationals, two in the Western).

Indeed, Youngblut has piloted all 248 issues of the weekly and is the only "Swerver" to have been on staff from launch until today. She parachuted, (or, rather, was parachuted by senior Herald management) back into her unsuspecting hometown from a magazine career in New York and Canada that had included launching ESPN: The Magazine for Disney, being deputy editor for the launch of MTV/Nickelodeon's Nick. Jr. magazine, redesigning the front-of-book for Western Living and launching two magazines for The Globe and Mail (West and Toronto)

What Swerve has become is a service- and personality-heavy guide that highlights the best of the city in true city magazine style yet, in the same vein, digs deep. So it ranges far and wide, in its square-formatted way, covering television, food, fashion, movies, events and every lifestyle topic imaginable as well as commissioning some ground-breaking features about the topside and occasionally the underbelly of the city.

The anniversary issue (November 6) is no less reverential about its accomplishments than most similar landmark issues, however it highlights some of its best (and occasionally wackiest) cover stories. These include putting its own spin on a forthcoming Royal visit and dressed up an impersonator as the Queen, documenting her day as a "commoner" around Calgary, putting her (in gown and sash) aboard the LRT, and taking her to the zoo. Another tracked down the exact spots where Brokeback Mountain was filmed around the city. And having a staff member dress up as a fish and visiting a kiddie pool in Eau Claire, there to nonplus parents and children alike.

Related posts:

• Vancouver named mag of the year at Western Magazine Awards (June 21, 2009)
• Swerve takes top honours in Western Magazine Awards (July 08 2006)