Holy Magazine Cover!

No sooner had Time Inc. announced merger plans with Warner Communications last spring than the debate began on whether the alliance would compromise Time’s journalistic integrity. Would Time’s magazines start promoting Warner Bros. movies? Time magazine itself wondered last March.

Time Warner’s top brass have insisted not, but the issue may not be dead. At a meeting with Columbia University journalism students last week, Time Warner President Nicholas J. Nicholas Jr. got a heated interrogation from a former Money magazine staffer about why Money’s November issue carries a cover photo of the Joker, the villain played by Jack Nicholson in Warner Bros.’ “Batman.” The illustration is for a story about choosing the best financial planner.

Nicholas, looking uncomfortable, said he knew nothing of the cover before it was printed and insisted that the choice belonged to Money managing editor Frank Lalli. “Do you want somebody at the top of the company to play God?” he asked.

“I only think the company has to be very sensitive to these issues,” said the questioner, Susan Macovsky.

Pass, Punt, Run--and Read

Does Bo know books?

Actually, Bo Jackson is one of the Raiders whose face didn’t make it on a special set of promotional bookmarks created by Pacific Sports Productions of Monrovia.

“At the time, they weren’t sure if Bo was going to play,” explained Mike Bone, executive vice president of the company.

You can’t buy the sets of 12 bookmarks--which are being underwritten by Knudsen dairies. But the bookmarks--each featuring one LA Raider--are free at more than 200 libraries around Los Angeles County.

The purpose, of course, is to get kids to read. On the back of each are several suggested books by the football players. Some are a bit weird, to say the least.

For example, defensive end Scott Davis seems to recommend the most unusual book of all: “How to Eat Fried Worms” by Thomas Rockwell. The marker describes the book this way: “a hilarious story about how Billy wins a bet by eating 15 worms in one day.”

Relief on the Big Screen

As commercials go, the ad for Century City Hospital’s back treatment program seen in recent months at the AMC theaters in Century City wasn’t much of a production. But it apparently was effective.

According to the magazine Modern Healthcare, 25% to 30% of inquiries each month about the hospital’s program were generated by the ads. Patrons saw the words “Back Again” on the screen along with a picture of a man gripping his back in agony. The remainder of the text referred viewers to the hospital.

The hospital, owned by Los Angeles-based National Medical Enterprises, paid the 14-theater complex $4,800 to flash the color slide twice before every screening over a four-month period.

The idea seems to be contagious. Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood contracted with the theater last month to show a slide promoting its drug dependency treatment program.