Marking Time With Gala for Magazine
The first issue of Time sold for 15 cents and featured Joseph Gurney Cannon on the cover. The “grand old man of Congress” was retiring after 23 terms in the House, an unbylined reporter wrote, because “he feels that he has earned the right to spend the rest of his life in the quiet seclusion of Danville, Illinois.”
Seventy-five years to the day later--Tuesday--the successors to founding editors Briton Hadden and Henry R. Luce plan to celebrate Time’s latest milestone during a black-tie gala in New York City that will be long on the kind of power that “Uncle Joe” Cannon had wielded as speaker of the House, but far from quiet. The A-list affair at Radio City Music Hall is designed to underscore the news weekly’s enduring influence in the digital age.
Among those scheduled to offer tributes to individuals who helped shape the century are President Clinton, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and filmmaker Steven Spielberg. The guest list includes Muhammad Ali; Coretta Scott King; Joe DiMaggio; Tom Hanks; the singer Jewel; Dr. David Ho, the AIDS researcher who was Time’s 1996 Man of the Year; and William Ginsburg, whom Monica Lewinsky has turned into the country’s best-known attorney.
You don’t build a tiered platform over Radio City’s seats, to accommodate all the dinner tables, without spending a lot of money. But next week’s anniversary follows an especially flush year for Time and Time Inc., the parent corporation.
Time’s average paid circulation in the second half of last year was 4,155,806 copies, up from 4,083,105 during the same period in 1995, when Walter Isaacson was named managing editor.
According to the Publishers Information Bureau, the number of ad pages rose a healthy 16% last year, to 2,781 pages. This generated an even healthier gain in ad revenue of 21.3%, for a total of $533.2 million.
Ad pages run by all the Time Inc. magazines, including People and Fortune, were at an all-time high last year, up 10.3%, to 26,577. The performance prompted Advertising Age this week to name Time Inc.’s chief executive, Don Logan, publishing executive of the year.
One possible development during Time’s 76th year is delivery before the weekend, instead of Monday, when the three news weeklies are now available in major cities. “By midyear, we should have a clear idea of whether we’ll go forward,” Time President E. Bruce Hallett said. “Some subscribers have told us that it would be a great thing for them to have the magazine before the weekend. On the other hand, there are a number of editorial and production issues to consider.”
Last summer, People moved up delivery to Friday from Monday in a bid to increase its already huge single-copy sales during weekend shopping outings and leisure hours. In the second half of 1997, a period when cover stories on the late Princess Diana drew strong interest, People’s single-copy sales rose 7.4%, to an average 1.5 million copies a week, compared to the same period a year earlier.
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All About Young Teens: One new measure of publisher interest in reaching the growing teenage audience, beyond Time Inc.’s recent launch of Teen People, is the increased strength that Petersen Publishing Co. has put behind All About You!
All About You!--aimed at girls 11 to 15 years old--was launched as a one-shot publication in 1994, grew to bimonthly frequency and this month began a 10-times-a-year schedule. The circulation guaranteed to advertisers is now 325,000 copies per issue.
To lure advertisers to this particular audience, Petersen points to market research showing that experimentation with various products--hair conditioners and deodorants, for example--often begins before age 12. What’s more, the research suggests, most girls establish a loyalty to specific product brands by age 15.
Postscript: YM and Seventeen finished first and second, respectively, and Teen ranked seventh in a survey of magazines with the biggest newsstand sales gains from 1987 to 1997. The survey is in the new issue of Capell’s Circulation Report, an industry newsletter.
Glamour--in Spanish, Too: A Spanish-language edition of Glamour went on sale this week on newsstands around the United States and in 19 Latin American countries. The monthly Glamour en Espanol is a joint venture of Glamour’s parent, Conde Nast Publications Inc., and Ideas Publishing Group, a Miami-based concern that also publishes Newsweek en Espanol.
Jacqueline Blanco, former fashion and beauty editor of Marie Claire en Espanol, is editor in chief of the startup, which features Argentinian model Yamila on its first cover and offers translations of pieces from the parent magazine. Glamour is the 2.1-million-circulation cornerstone of Conde Nast.
* Paul D. Colford is a columnist for Newsday. His e-mail address is paul.colford@newsday.com. His column is published Thursdays.