THE four celebrity magazines that breathlessly covered the Jennifer Aniston/Brad Pitt bustup all hit the jackpot. Their gambles paid off. Usually when only two magazines share a similar image or theme, it is death to one – if not both.
This week, People, Us Weekly, Star and In Touch all reaped near record sales on the newsstand, defying conventional wisdom.
People, which rushed to get its issue to newsstands on Monday, Jan. 10 – days earlier than usual – had the strongest newsstand sales.
“We should be well over 2 million copies,” said People Deputy Editor Larry Hackett. That makes it the strongest selling issue on newsstands since the People issue that hit the week of Sept. 11, 2001, which was the mag’s all-time bestseller.
Us Weekly also hit early, with first issues on the bust-up out by Tuesday, Jan. 11 – and it paid off. “I think Us sold 1,020,000 copies,” said one inside source. “It was not the best seller ever, but it was a very high seller – for Us and everyone else.”
In Touch, the newest title in the mix and the one with the lowest cover price ($1.49), sold 1.1 million in newsstand sales, claiming second place.
Bonnie Fuller, editorial director of American Media was overruled on her desire to rush out a new issue of Star. But when Star did reach newsstands on Jan. 12, it had a new cover twist: Angelina Jolie was the source of the Brad/Jen split. Consumers snapped it up also.
“We think we’ll have over a million copies on newsstands, that’s up about 12 percent over a normal week,” said American Media CEO David Pecker.
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Time Inc.’s Transworld Media is about to get thwacked in the back of its collective head with another wet snowball.
Future Network, the California-based company that owns Guitar World and once sold Time Inc. the Internet title Business 2.0, is about to go into business against Time Inc.
Staffed by some defectors from the Transworld titles, Future Networks is going to start an active sports network that will publish two new titles, Future Snowboarding, which will launch in August and put out five issues, and Future Skateboarding, which will put out two special guide issues this year and go to regular publication next year.
They’ll be aiming at the market leaders, Transworld Snowboarding, and Transworld Skateboarding as well as some of the rival at Primedia and an independently published mag, The Skateboard Magazine.
Fran Richards, who left Transworld Media several years ago, is heading up the new group at Future Networks.
“We’re set to win,” said Richards. “Our entire staff is breakaways from other publicaitons.” He’s hired one of the preeminent photographers in the business, Dano Pendygrasse, who was at Transworld.
The Future Snowboarding editor is Colin Whyte, who jumped from the Primedia title, Snowboarder.
Future Networks also just bought a glossy upscale mag, The Snowboard Journal, started by Jon Foster. His partner in the endeavor is Jason Ford.
In one raid, Justin Cobb was promoted to associate publisher of Transworld Snowboarding in late December and resigned a few days later to jump to the new Future Snowboarding as associate publisher.
Losing people to the competition is nothing new to Transworld.
“Transworld is certainly taking their lumps,” said David Smith, the one-time editor in chief of Transworld Skateboarding who was part of the original breakaway group in October 2003. He now heads The Skateboard Magazine in San Diego, which will celebrate its one-year anniversary in March with close to 900 ad pages for the year.
Of the Transworld magazines that he worked on for 15 years, he jeers, “They may be the market leaders, but they’re not leading the industry, if you know what I mean.”
None of this seems to particularly bother the Transworld people. Even though the group was forced to shut down Freeze with the January issue, Group Publisher Brad McDonald says it is starting a new title aimed at the all-terrain vehicle market this fall.
The Transworld Snowboarding and Skateboarding titles are still No. 1 in marketshare, ahead of Primedia’s Skateboarder, Snowboarder and Surfer titles.
“We’re the top of the heap by a wide margin,” said McDonald.