Cahners Will Buy Variety and Daily Variety : Publishing House Plans Design Changes in Both Papers; Price Undisclosed

Variety and Daily Variety, the trade papers regarded as bibles of the entertainment industry, have agreed to be acquired by Cahners Publishing Co., a publisher of business trade magazines, the companies announced late Monday.

The purchase price was not disclosed for the deal, which is expected to be completed by mid-August.

The two publications are among the most profitable in the entertainment business and posted combined 1986 revenue of $20 million.

Daily Variety, with a circulation of 22,000, is published in Hollywood and concentrates on the movie and TV industry. Variety, with a weekly circulation of 45,000, is published in New York and focuses on the theatrical business.

The publications will continue to operate from their present headquarters under current management, said Ronald Segel, president of Newton, Mass.-based Cahners. The company--which publishes 52 specialized business magazines, including Publishers Weekly and Restaurants & Institutions--is a subsidiary of Reed International PLC, based in London.

“The acquisition of Variety is in line with Cahners’ goal of expanding its publishing operations into new areas by acquiring leading publications in the field,” Segel said.

Few Changes Expected

Indeed, the company expects to develop a number of related entertainment publications, with Variety as the flagship.

“Variety will become the nucleus of a new entertainment division of Cahners,” Segel said.

All 125 employees will remain with the company, he said.

Syd Silverman, longtime president of Variety, will remain in the top post. He was unavailable for comment late Monday.

But his son, Michael Silverman, associate publisher of Daily Variety and heir apparent to the publisher’s post at Variety, said he expects few changes in the publication.

“They (Cahners) have promised that they won’t come in and change a lot things,” he said. “I presume that their thinking is: Why mess up a good thing?”

Variety has been a very good thing for the entertainment industry since it was founded by Sime Silverman, Syd’s father, in 1905.

The former vaudeville critic for a New York newspaper left his job to form Variety when his editor asked him to tone down a scathing review of a show.

Industry observers regard Variety as one of the few publications in the country that is almost unchanged from the day it started. Even the familiar logo--with the extra-long V--is virtually the same as it was when Silverman’s wife designed it on a nightclub tablecloth eight decades ago.

However, changes in design at both publications are likely, said Fred Lubet, Cahners’ vice president of advertising. But as for the content of the publications, he said, “Nothing there needs to be fixed.”

The magazine’s heyday was in the 1920s and 1930s, when vaudeville was at its peak. But over the years, it became heavily oriented to motion pictures at the cost of covering the music and television industries.