Competition Among Women’s Sports Magazines Enters New Round
Two years ago, sports magazines for women looked like one of the liveliest categories in publishing. Time Inc. put out two test issues of Sports Illustrated Women / Sport, a spinoff of the mighty Sports Illustrated, and Conde Nast Publications Inc. introduced Conde Nast Sports for Women. Here in 1999, however, the future of the category is still taking shape.
Expectations in the case of Time Inc. appear more modest than they originally were as the publishing giant rethinks its approach. Sports Illustrated’s entry, which was not published last year as Time Inc. evaluated the venture, will resurface March 11 as the renamed Sports Illustrated for Women. This time, Time Inc. is aiming younger--at women 16 to 34--and is promising advertisers a circulation of 250,000, compared with 600,000 two years ago.
But Time Inc. is not characterizing the return of its women’s magazine as a full-fledged launch. Rather, it will be the first of four special issues to be published this year. The first one will preview the NCAA women’s basketball finals; the others will be timed to the World Cup soccer tournament, the fall schedule of college sports and the WNBA season. There’s no long-term commitment to the magazine just yet, according to Cleary Simpson, publisher of SI for Kids and acting publishing director of the women’s publication.
Since the launch of Conde Nast Sports for Women, the magazine has undergone an overhaul and name change. In 1998, Conde Nast bought and shut down the 200,000-circulation Women’s Sports & Fitness, took its name (and fitness focus), added its subscribers and scaled back from monthly to bimonthly frequency. A fall survey put the median age of readers at 32.3. Last month, the circulation guaranteed to advertisers was raised by 125,000 copies to 475,000.
“We stuck it out,” Suzanne M. Grimes, publisher of Women’s Sports & Fitness, said in an interview this week. “We now feel we’re the leader in the category. But we welcome the return of Sports Illustrated because it validates what we’re doing and the success we’ve been having, especially on newsstands.”
Cover lines--oh so important in the newsstand wars--include these in the January-February issue: “The perfect 10 moves for your abs, arms, back, butt and legs” and “Dive In! Our complete guide to snorkel & scuba vacations.” A two-page group photo of women who engage in death-defying extreme sports was shot by the great Annie Leibovitz.
Grimes added that Women’s Sports & Fitness will hold to its bimonthly frequency this year while examining whether to resume monthly publication down the road or to raise the magazine’s circulation guarantee. The publisher said the name change last summer helped generate a surge of interest because the word “fitness” in the label “resonates with women.”
According to Grimes, about two-thirds of those women who sent in subscription cards from the renamed July-August issue indicated that they had never heard of the magazine when it was known as Conde Nast Sports for Women.
A third player in the field is Mariah Media, publisher of Outside. The company, based in Santa Fe, N.M., recently announced its commitment to Women Outside, which was published once last fall.
Dagny Scott, former editor in chief of Women’s Sports & Fitness (before its sale to Conde Nast), has joined Women Outside as editor. The magazine for women who seek the rugged outdoors will be published again in the spring and a second time later in the year before accelerating to a quarterly schedule in 2000.
Jay Leno, Columnist: Jay Leno will hang on to his night job while turning his tinkering into print. The motor enthusiast has been named a contributing editor of Popular Mechanics, which features the first of his every-other-month columns (“Jay Leno’s Garage”) in its March issue (on sale Tuesday).
“Want to know what’s really wrong with this country?” he asks. “Step into my shop on any given day and you’ll know. I’m 48 years old and I’m the youngest guy in there.”
Leno argues for teaching kids about mechanics, or at least making such courses available, and he gives McPherson College in McPherson, Kan., a jolt of valuable publicity by extolling its program in auto restoration.
Scripts for Sale: Stephen King’s “Storm of the Century” will air as a six-hour miniseries on ABC starting Feb. 14. Pocket Books plans to sell King’s screenplay--yes, the screenplay--of this creepy island tale in an oversize paperback edition.
Meanwhile, Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” which is having a 50th-anniversary production on Broadway starring Brian Dennehy as Willy Loman, has been made available by Penguin Books in a 50th-anniversary edition that features a new preface by the playwright and photographs of the 1949 and current casts.
Paul Colford’s e-mail address is paul.colford@newsday.com
For more reviews, read Sunday Book Review.
* Passion Play: Edward Hirsch on how to fall in love with poetry; Carol Muske Dukes on Adrienne Rich’s “Midnight Salvage”; and Richard Howard on Eugenio Montale.
