Maxim, CBS say let's get digital together

The porous border between the U.S. and Canada makes it imperative to understand what is happening in the big U.S. networks and specialty cable channels and the relationship with magazines that sell both sides of the border. As but one example, the announcement was made today that men’s lifestyle property Maxim.com (the online manifestation of Maxim magazine) has formed a 'strategic content-sharing partnership' with CBS SportsLine, a component of CBS Digital Media.

This means that Maxim.com will carry CBS sports headlines and scores which will link to CBS Sportsline for the full stories. Maxim.com will provide entertainment items and "irreverent" sports content for the Sportsline site, which will link to the Maxim website and, ultimately, the magazine.

The acceleration of the such web-based synergies can only work when there is a common or substantially overlapping audience -- the youthful, heavily male audience of Maxim and its website are just the audience that CBS Sportsline is looking for and wants to encourage. The sports-mad CBS audience is just Maxim's kind of guys.

It can also happen only when the content is complementary, in this case sports and whatever.

The Maxim/CBS deal is not unique, it's not even unusual these days. It's becoming a given. This kind of a model won't work for every magazine company, but every magazine company has to look hard at creating content that can be marketed elsewhere, spanning any gaps between print and online and online and broadcast.

There may be no accounting for the taste or the sense of humour of the Maxim audience, but it's hard to quarrel with their success in building and then exploiting its audience. It is hugely successful worldwide and in Canada alone sells 1.8 million copies annually (12 issues; 33,000 subs; 115,000 singles per issue).