Publishers of Tribute to produce new magazine for U.S. cinemas

Last month, Tribute Entertainment Media Group suffered an (expected) setback when its Tribute in-theatre magazine was bounced from a bunch of cinemas in favour of Famous magazine in the wake of the Cineplex takeover of Famous Players.

This month, Tribute was able to announce a significant bounce-back by signing a deal to put a new title into 13,000 cinemas in the U.S. controlled by National CineMedia Inc.

According to a story in the National Post, the deal has been two years in the making, beginning when Brian Stewart, the head of Tribute approached Regal Entertainment, part of National CineMedia, with the idea. The American company decided to put it out for proposals to other big players like Time Warner Inc., Conde Nast Publications Inc. and Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., which published Premiere magazine.but, ultimately, went with Tribute. As Stewart says, "We were a pioneer in in-theatre exploitation."

U.S. movie theatres have not previously gone with dedicated in-theatre magazines, distributing instead traditional newsstand titles like Premiere and Entertainment Weekly to their customers. Tribute's deal comes in the wake of the announced closure of Premiere.

Tribute has a circulation of about 500,000 in Canada. The company publishes four other magazines -- Kids Tribute, Teen Tribute, En Primeur and En Primeur Jeunesse -- and operates a Web site, www.tribute.ca, that receives 1.1 million hits a month.