Next Issue in Doubt : Money-Losing Saturday Review Put Up for Sale

Saturday Review, the 62-year-old magazine once dedicated to literature, is for sale again and may not publish its next issue, insiders said Thursday.

The crisis apparently will end the tenure of Saturday Review Limited Partners, a Washington group that bought the magazine in 1984 and tried to attract new readers to the publication with photos of attractive women on the covers and movie-star profiles inside.

John P. Casey, vice president of Meridian Investments, said his investment banking firm has 22 interested buyers and hopes to announce a deal by Oct. 15. The asking price is $3.5 million.

Inside the magazine, however, hopes apparently are not so high. Privately, some staff members refer to the investment bankers as the “Sunshine Boys” because of their optimism about the sale, one staff member said.

Stories Returned to Writers

Also in doubt is whether Saturday Review will publish its next issue. Casey said the magazine plans to continue, under new management or old.

But writers and contributors to the magazine said Saturday Review’s editors spent last week emptying files and returning stories to contributors with apologies and in some cases kill fees.

“There isn’t anything here to publish,” one insider said.

“I think it’s deader than a mackerel,” added Zan Thompson, one of the magazine’s columnists.

Saturday Review Publisher Paul Dietrich, president of a conservative Washington think tank called the National Center for Legislative Research, declined to be interviewed.

The crisis is the latest for the magazine founded in 1924 as a weekly review of literature by novelist and poet Christopher Morley and Time Inc. founder Henry Luce. Since 1982, Saturday Review has suspended publication twice and had three different owners.

In 1982, thinking the magazine dead, longtime editor Norman Cousins wrote that “the underlying aim of the Saturday Review through all the years . . . was to serve and strengthen the cultural marketplace of good taste. . . . This emphasis takes on special significance in the light of the sleaziness that has infected the national culture in recent years.”

Sought Younger Readers

Upon taking over in June, 1984, however, Dietrich and Editor Frank Gannon decided to recast the magazine in search of younger readers, switching from a weekly to a bimonthly schedule and in Casey’s words taking “the USA Today format.”

Most covers have featured a pretty model and cover lines featured stories such as Marilyn Monroe’s “Secret Lives and Death,” “The 52 Prettiest Faces in America” and “38 Over and Underrated People.”

But Dietrich’s group lacked the capital to finance their redirection, Casey said. Unable to pay for direct-mail campaigns to boost subscriptions, Saturday Review circulation has dropped to 150,000 from 220,000 in 1984 and 480,000 in 1982.

Casey said the magazine lost $1.5 million in 1985 and will lose another $875,000 this year.

In March, Dietrich set out to find 80 limited partners who each would pay $100,000. Finding little success, he decided last month to sell instead. One reason, Casey said, is that the expected losses at Saturday Review will no longer be tax deductible to limited partners under the tax reform law.

Casey said Dietrich hopes to retain the television rights to the Saturday Review name and is trying to put together a program now that would be “an upscale ‘Entertainment Tonight.’ ” If the buyer insists, however, Casey said Dietrich and his group would sell the TV rights for an additional $1 million.

SATURDAY REVIEW CIRCULATION

1986 143,757 1985 NA 1984 220,000 1983 210,559 1982 480,000 1981 502,052 1980 520,735 1979 NA 1978 530,024 1977 511,393 1976 493,028 1975 501,885

Figures are as of June of each year. 1975-1981 and 1983: From Audit Bureau of Circulations. 1984 and 1982: Provided by Saturday Review. 1986: From a sworn statement by the publisher.