Captivating Connections.

bloomberg to buy businessweek.

"Bloomberg is taking another step from the trading floor into the corner office.

The company said Tuesday that it was the winning bidder for BusinessWeek, the troubled 80-year-old title that McGraw-Hill had put on sale this summer.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the price was said to be near $5 million, plus assumption of liabilities, which were $31.9 million as of April.

The magazine will continue to be a weekly print publication, rechristened Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Decisions have not been made about BusinessWeek’s staff of more than 400 people; Bloomberg will select which of those employees it wants by the end of the year, when the deal closes. Those not selected will receive severance from McGraw-Hill, said a BusinessWeek executive."

just how special are 'special issues'?

One of my favorite magazines is the New York Times Magazine supplement that comes out in the Weekend Edition once in a while. Apparently, these special issues may be a boon to magazines, like it was to ESPN:

"ESPN created its Body Issue, on newsstands now, not only to make waves. The topic meant ESPN could call it a special issue, which got advertisers’ attention and money.

Print advertising is in miserable straits right now, but special issues seem to be the one thing attracting ad dollars. At ESPN, for instance, ad pages were down about 24 percent in the first six months of this year from the same period a year earlier, according to Publishers Information Beauro. But the Body Issue is the biggest October issue, in terms of revenue, that ESPN has ever had.

“The analogy is to why you pay a premium to run in the Oscars or the Super Bowl — there are more people, more deeply engaged, it creates a lot more buzz,' said Peter Gardiner, chief media officer for the advertising agency Deutsch, part of the Interpublic Group Of Companies 'Times 'Man Of The Year' is going to be a lot more interesting than the average Time magazine.'

But the success of special issues may have a side effect of making regular issues seem dull. Advertisers want new executions, big promotions and splashy special events when they run an ad, which they do not always get in normal issues. Despite that, Mr. Gardiner said, normal issues are still worthwhile.

'A regular issue, by definition, we think is still valuable from an advertising perspective — you just get a little extra oomph in the special issues,' he said."

r.i.p. gourmet, cookie, modern bride, & elegant bride.

Sad!

"Conde Nast Publications announced this morning that it is shuttering four magazines, following a widely publicized review by McKinsey and Company. Food bible Gourmet will shut down, Brides will increase to monthly publication but Modern Bride and Elegant Bride will close, as will family lifestyle magazine Cookie.

The changes show resolve by Conde Nast to eliminate redundant brands -- an opposite strategy than earlier in the decade, when the company was happy to boast food titles Gourmet and Bon Appetit, men's mags GQ, Details, Cargo, Vitals, and Men's Vogue, home titles House & Garden, Architectural Digest, Domino and occasionally Vogue Living, and numerous women's books including Vogue, Glamour, Self, Jane and Allure. In those days, the company's direction was to block competition and nail down every available ad dollar in a given category.

magazines move towards (digital) mainstream.

We saw yesterday how sales are down for magazines. But what's going on with them in regards to digital?

It seems a lot!

"We have been told for months that digital is the one bright spot in--with few exceptions--an overall dark year for consumer magazines, and our quarterly tracking of year-over-year Web site traffic bears this out. In comparing page views and unique visitor totals from June 2009 versus June 2008 (different from the month-to-month reviews), we find a number of brands making high double-digit and even triple-digit percentage gains. Keep in mind that the overall U.S. Internet population has peaked in the last year and overall usage is leveling. It is safe to say that the year-over-year gains that magazines as a whole are enjoying online reflect a real increase in the media mind-share for these brands. Dare we say even that for many consumers the 'periodical' brands finally are becoming always-on brands in the users’ minds.

magazines have seen better days.

The latest numbers don't exactly flatter magazines...

"So far in 2009, the magazine business looks a lot like the Jon and Kate Gosselin divorce splayed all over the supermarket tabloids: you have to look very hard to find a winner.

With already-dismal ad figures for the first half of 2009, magazine publishers turned in their circulation figures on Monday, showing that newsstand sales plummeted 12.4 percent in the first half of this year. Newsstand sales are thought to be a bellwether for the economy, or at least for how willing consumers are to fork over $5 for an impulse purchase.

The good news was that paid subscriptions actually increased a bit, meaning that over all, circulation fell 1.2 percent, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations report. Newsstand sales were down for all but one of Hearst’s magazines, although only three were down 20 percent or more: SmartMoney (down 35.1 percent), Redbook (down 23.5 percent) and Town & Country (down 20 percent). The Hearst figures exclude Food Network Magazine, which was not measured because it is a new publication."

newsstand sales down.

It's another grim news day for magazines, but it's not all dark clouds:

"Recession and a dispute with magazine wholesalers combined to hammer many titles' newsstand sales in the first half of this year -- much as publishers worried they would. That's based on new numbers from many publishers in the lead-up to a big semi-annual report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Happily for the industry, many magazines rely much more on subscriptions, which seemed to hold up better. Reader's Digest saw newsstand sales sink 20% from the first half of 2008, for example, but those single-copy sales represent a sliver of its circulation. Subscriptions, comprising 92% of the pie, fell a much more manageable 3%, so Reader's Digest still exceeded its circulation guarantee to advertisers."

jpmorgan chase sudden major media player.

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, considered by many to be the country's most influential and successful bank executive, can add another title to his resume: Accidental media mogul.

That's right. The banker, thanks to the sagging economy, which has cratered several media giants leaving the lender in the driver's seat, now holds sway over Readers Digest, Source Interlink Media and American Media Inc. -- which have combined revenues of about $5.04 billion.

That's more than Time Inc., generally considered the nation's No. 1 magazine publisher with its stable-leading Sports Illustrated and People titles helping it ring up $4.6 billion in revenue last year, and the combined revenue of Hearst, publisher of Esquire, and Condé Nast, the parent of Vogue.

and it starts.

"The Economist has launched a single copy subscription service that allows readers to order just one copy of the magazine for home delivery the next day.

The Economist Direct allows UK readers to place an order online or via text message for a single copy of the latest issue of the weekly publication.

The service does not require readers to commit to subscribing to the magazine for any period and the cost of the magazine is £4 – the same as the newsstand price."

the smell (and look) of desperation.

Are kangaroos the new inspiration for magazines?

"What gets magazines — and other traditional media — going these days is the need for new sources of revenue. Although back covers of magazines have carried ads for decades, the front covers had long been sacrosanct as pitch free zones.

But just as newspapers (including this one) have begun to sell ads on the front pages of sections, magazines are selling space on or inside front covers.

For example, Entertainment Weekly magazine, part of the Time Inc. division of Time Warner, included a pocket on the cover of its April 3 issue that contained a pull-out ad for a new series on ABC, 'The Unusuals.'

Esquire magazine, also published by Hearst, printed special covers for its February and May issues with special ads that appeared on the back side of editorial content.

The proliferation of ads associated with front covers concerns an organization representing the editorial side of the magazine business because of the potential for blurring the line between paid and unpaid content."

r.i.p men.style.com.

"Conde Nast will shut down one of its web-only brands, Men.Style.com, when it gives two of its titles, GQ and Details, their own websites in October.

The move marks a partial dismantling of Conde Nast's strategy of creating web-only brands to house magazine content, such as Style.com, Epicurious.com and Concierge.com, and the realization that in many cases the best brand for the web is the one that's been successful in print.