First Time, now Fortune sold off

Meredith Corporation has sold Fortune magazine for $150 million in cash in a deal that will close by year end. The sale comes just a week after that of Time magazine for $190 million in cash.  These two major titles were part of the acquisition of Time Inc. by Meredith earlier this year and the sell-off two other important titles, Sports Illustrated and Money, are expected imminently.  Meredith has said that it was in particular unloading four titles titles didn’t align with Meredith’s core audience of American women.

Chatchaval Jiaravanon, Thai business tycooon and owner of Fortune Media Group Holdings Limited of Bangkok bought Fortune as a personal private investment; according to a story in Media Post, he intends to grow the brand's digital capabilities, geographic expansion and editorial team.  

“Our vision is to establish Fortune as the world’s leading business media brand, with an always-on reach and global relevance:” Jiarovenon stated. He believes “the demand for high-quality business information is growing,” which will lead to profitable growth for both the publication and its events branch.  

Tech billionaire Marc Benioff and his wife Lynn Benioff bought Time. 

Time Inc.'s Canadian advertising sales to be handled by Publicitas

Time Inc. has selected Publicitas to handle its advertising sales in Canada. It was announced today that the large international marketing services company will represent over 30 print and digital brands across the Time Inc. portfolio which may include People, Sports Illustrated, InStyle, Time, Real Simple, Southern Living, Entertainment Weekly, Cooking Light and Fortune. The multi-year agreement is effective immediately. The arrangement does not include the Affluent Media Group (Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine and Departures.)

“We awarded our Canadian business to Publicitas because of its solid track record with some of our key brands, its talented and driven team and its deep relationships in the region,” said Ellis. “We conducted a thorough search for a partner to help us better extend our ‘One Time Inc.’ sales approach to our clients in Canada. Publicitas was the unanimous choice, and we welcome the company to the Time Inc. team. It is going to be a great asset for us.”

Time Inc. expected to cut another 400 jobs in face of declining revenues

Last fall, Time Inc. cut 600 jobs to save $150 million. This week, probably Wednesday, according to a story in MediaDailyNews, it is expected to eliminate up to 400 more jobs as the company plans to cut another $100 million in costs in the face of continuing decline in advertising and circulation revenue -- ad revenues down 26%, circ revenues 22.2% in the 2nd quarter of the year.

Another large publisher, Meredith Corporation, is expected to announce more revenue declines in its 3rd quarter, with total revenues down 9% and the national media group (including magazines) down 7.5%. Meredith has been saying the relatively small declines are good news, particularly the company's share of overall industry ad revenues, though this is apparent share increase is of a significantly diminished pie.

Fortune magazine cuts back to 18 issues a year

Fortune magazine is being cut back to 18 issues a year from 25, says Time Inc. According to a story on Bloomberg.com, while each issue will be somewhat larger, the new publication schedule is part of another round of cuts aimed at meeting parent Time Warner Inc.'s targets for savings. In November 2008, Time Inc. eliminated 600 jobs (about 6 per cent of the work force).

At Fortune, advertising sales were down 33% over the first nine months of the year during a period when magazine advertising over all fell 20%.

Time Inc. is not for sale, now or later, says its CEO

Despite the flurry of bloggy speculation, Time Warner is not going to sell its magazines, according to its CEO, Jeff Bewkes. During an Atlantic Monthly conference in Washington, according to a post on Daily Finance by Jeff Bercovci, Bewkes was asked a direct question and gave a similarly direct answer.

"Time Inc. is not for sale," Bewkes told his interviewer, journalist Jeffrey Goldberg. "People made these rumors because they want a lot of activity."

Goldberg, apparently knowing that saying this doesn't mean it won't be for sale later, asked if Time Warner would be in the magazine business in five years:

"Yeah, and I think the magazine business has plenty of expansion in it," Bewkes replied. "It is true that the magazine business, right now, during this recession, is having a bit of an advertising recession, but the thing to remember about magazines in general and certainly our magazines is the readership is solid, the readership is holding up, the readers are happy, the titles are thriving."

Commentary and speculation about what such a sell-off might look like was sparked when a major investor, Gordon Crawford, managing director of the capital group, was quoted predicting that Time Inc. would be sold off in order that Time Warner could concentrate in entertainment and broadcasting. Other commenters said it could come within six to nine months. (The word on the street is that the whole stable of 100+ magazines, if sold as a package, could cost the buyers upwards of $10 billion.)

Time Inc. unveils Maghound, a mix-and-match "consumer-centric" subscription service

At the 2008 Circulation Management Conference in Chicago this week, Time Inc. unveiled the demo of its Maghound service which allows people to buy magazine "subscriptions" in mix-and-match fashion, switching titles whenever they wish. According to a story in Folio:, the service is set to launch this September and 280 titles (many of them owned by Time Inc.) are already aboard.

The service is similar to Netflix, only for magazines and Dave Ventresca, president of Maghound Entrprises, Inc. said that, unlike traditional subscriptions, members aren't locked in and may cancel whenever they wish. He said beta testing had shown that the service attracted a younger, highly educated, affluent demographic. There was also apparently little cannibalization from traditional subscribers.Essentially, a subscriber to the service gets all their magazines for one price from one source and can customize the mix of titles at any time.

“There has been this major paradigm shift in the way consumers shop, pay for and manage the services they choose [Ventresca said]. And this shift has occurred everywhere except for magazines. We still sell on a fixed-term subscription or by single copy with no innovation. And [Maghound] is hoping to change that....Circulation has always been publisher-centric. With Maghound, it becomes consumer-centric.”

The pricing is three titles for $3.95 per month, five titles for $7.95, seven titles for $9.95, and $1 per title for eight titles or more.

Titles that have a non-discounted traditional sub rate of around $19 or more per year are considered “premium” titles and will have an extra $2 fee per month (10-15 percent of titles fall in this category). First-time users will also be eligible for a free one month trial.

Titles bought through Maghound would be classified as single copies for circulation auditing purposes.

Business 2.0 closing

Time Inc. is closing down Business 2.0, a monthly magazine about the "new economy" and will absorb part of its San Francisco-based staff into Fortune magazine. Since the magazine was founded in 1999, it has lost about US$110 million. Time Warner (as it was) bought the-then biweekly title in 2001 for US$68 million from the British company that started it and merged it with its struggling startup e Company Now, according to a story in the New York Times.

In recent months, there has been a lot of speculation about the magazine's future, based on its downward spiral in advertising support.

Reportedly, Time Inc. turned down an offer from Business 2.0 rival Fast Company (Mansuetto Ventures) to acquire the title and its list of 600,000 subscribers.

Advertising Age said the move had several interesting implications, including the possibility that the small business focus of Business 2.0 might enliven the rather ponderous Fortune. It said "the move is the first from Vivek Shah since he was named president of the Time Inc. Business and Finance Network in June. It wouldn't be surprising if Mr. Shah had further moves planned, possibly including a reorganization of the struggling group."

Taking a summer plunge on digi-mags at Time Inc.

"It's just a nice, fun bonus that we're offering our consumer."

-- Time Inc. group publisher Paul Caine, referring to the digital online "one-shot test" edition of People magazine.

A story in Ad Age says that Time Inc. executives are keeping expectations low about the test because no one knows how well such digital initiatives will do. (A lot of people working for the corporation are wondering, since the investment meant a lot of people lost their jobs on the traditional print side.) Time Inc. has shunted a good deal of its resources into developing these initiatives for several of its titles.

Beginning today, 1.2 million subscribers to People will be getting e-mails this week with links to the new digital edition. (Note: it loads very slowly both because of its size and probably because so many people are going online at once to look at it.)

The 30-page digi-mag starts with an animated cover in which dolphins leap out of the water behind a bathing suit-clad Beyonce Knowles while a "Plus: Matthew McConaughey On The Beach!" tease floats up and down. Surf sounds play in the background. Editorial spreads allow consumers to watch movie trailers, tool through McConaughey photos, try different accessories on a mannequin wearing an Ella Moss dress and play with the advertising. Buffering delays are eliminated by loading the issue all at once.

People's staff designed most of the creative elements but worked with a digital-magazine production company called Blogform Digital Magazines to get the issue built. Unlike magazines digitally reproduced on systems such as Zinio, there's no software to install, there's a different soundtrack for every page, ads are interactive far beyond clickable URLs and all the content is original.

Industry observers are taking a wait and see attitude.

"This thing could pan out or it could be a dismal flop that they learn something from," said Brad Adgate, senior VP-director of research at Horizon Media. "This could be a template for future initiatives or this could be something along the lines of New Coke."

No online slackers allowed, says Time editor

Time magazine is turning up the heat under its writers and columnists to contribute to Time.com as well as the print magazine. The website was re-launched 4 months ago and while editor Richard Stengel says the results have been good, they're not good enough. According to an item carried in Gawker, he sent a memo to all staff that said,in effect,the future of their jobs depended upon it.

As good as TIME.com is, it still needs to be better. And it still needs more content, much more. A number of our best journalists are writing stories and covering their beats for TIME.com and the magazine simultaneously, and it gives me pleasure to single some of them out by name: Joe Klein, Jim Poniewozik, Karen Tumulty, Simon Elegant, Richard Corliss, Alex Perry, Bryan Walsh, Sean Gregory, Bobby Ghosh, Massimo Calabresi, Tim McGirk and Bruce Crumley. As you can see, this list includes many of our best traditional magazine journalists, and that's no accident; if you cover a beat or territory with passion and expertise, you can and should cover it any medium.

That list needs to grow. I sent out a memo last week about evaluations. Let me make this explicit: evaluations of every Time writer, correspondent, and reporter will be based on the quality and quantity of the contributions each of you makes to both the magazine and to TIME.com. TIME.com is a daily responsibility; Time magazine is a weekly responsibility. Time is made up of both.

I suspect that some of you regard writing for TIME.com as an obligation, and not what you came to Time to do. But times have changed, and we have to change with them. If you care about what you do - and I know you do - then you need to display your talent, your expertise, and your dedication online as well as in the magazine.

Teen People web venture to be wound up

Apparently it was not a brave, new world for TeenPeople.com, the online version of Teen People, which Time Inc has announced will be subsumed within the People magazine website. It has been less than a year since the print magazine was discontinued with a lot of bold talk about the digital future.

The readers of Teen People were said to be more attuned to accessing the content online, making the print magazine redundant, it was said. Well, according to a Folio: story, the traffic didn't bear out the high hopes.

Sites such as TeenPeople.com and ElleGirl.com have in the past posted impressive traffic relative to print circulations but lag far behind other sites that cater to their audience, such as MySpace, according to a recent report in Folio:. Teenpeople.com had 435,000 unique visitors in March of 2006, but is currently not meeting the minimum sample standards needed for Nielsen/NetRatings to project its current audience size, Mediaweek.com reported today.

Pale shadow of LIFE snuffed out

Time Inc. has announced that the venerable title LIFE will cease publication -- again -- effective April 20. There are many who have felt that the magazine, which had a glorious history as the pre-eminent picture magazine, had been suffering sort of a living death as a stripped-down newspaper supplement.

Now, the name and image will only appear online as a photography portal and in certain branded books and collections. The only good news? That LIFE's enormous archive of 10 million images will be available online, free for private use.
LIFE was re-launched as a newspaper supplement in 2004 and is carried in 103 newspapers with a total circulation of 13 million, the company said.

"While consumers responded enthusiastically to LIFE, with the decline in the newspaper business, and the outlook for advertising growth in the newspaper supplement category, the response was not strong enough to warrant further investment in LIFE as a weekly newspaper supplement," Time Inc. said in a statement.

LIFE, launched in 1936, was a weekly until 1972 when it went on hiatus and then re-appeared as a monthly, which also folded but then was revived as a supplement. The magazine had not been doing well financially, down 9.2% in advertising revenue and 21.3% in ad pages through February, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.

"LIFE magazine was a truly innovative publishing venture. It was developed, edited and published by some of the best talent in the business and we can remain proud of its many achievements. But sometimes we have to make tough calls, and this was one," said Time Inc. Chairman, CEO Ann Moore in a statement. "Growth requires taking risks and the potential upside was huge, but unfortunately the timing worked against us. The market has moved dramatically since October 2004 and it is no longer appropriate to continue publication of LIFE as a newspaper supplement. However, Time Inc. remains committed to the LIFE brand, and we will now be concentrating on migrating this iconic brand in many innovative ways on multiple digital platforms."

The company said LIFE "will continue with its plan to launch a major portal to put its entire collection of 10 million images online. The most important collection of imagery covering the events and the people of the 20th century will be made available to the public for personal use at no cost. More than 97% of this collection has never been seen by the public and contains the works of such master photographers as Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White and Gordon Parks, among others. LIFE's online site, to be launched later this year, will become the preeminent destination to view the most important photography of our time, both archival and contemporary."

Time takes some compliments

We don't often get to see the U.S. edition of Time, unless it's in transit at a U.S. airport, but the magazine has undergone a much-publicized redesign, which was unveiled last Friday. The cover subject was a brief flash of controversy because it showed Ronald Reagan with a phony tear trickling down his cheek (we thought the idea was so crashingly, obviously an illustration that we wondered why anyone got upset). Anway, Advertising Age asked a bunch of other magazine editors to comment on the new look. Most of what they said was more or less complimentary.