Few Changes Expected for Enquirer, Star
Fear not, all you who turn to the National Enquirer and the Star for pix of celebs on their worst hair days and the latest whispers from Hollywood. Though the company that publishes the two tabloids is getting a new owner, the incoming chairman wants the papers to stick to their snoopy routines.
The Star, which was the first to reveal Gennifer Flowers’ allegations about President Clinton in 1992 and Dick Morris’ extramarital exploits four years later, trumpets “Jennifer Aniston & Brad Pitt’s sizzling ‘honeymoon’ ” in its March 2 issue, complete with telephoto clutches. The Enquirer, whose greatest hits include the first peek in 1987 of Donna Rice sitting on Gary Hart’s lap aboard the Monkey Business, has Roseanne as a guest editor of its latest issue and “Stars’ Beauty Secrets” as the lead feature.
“We don’t see the editorial content changing much,” said David J. Pecker, who is preparing to take over as chairman and chief executive officer of American Media, the weeklies’ new owner. “When you’re No. 1 and No. 2 in your field, the last thing you do is make revolutionary changes. Any changes would be evolutionary.”
Pecker, one of the best-known figures in magazine publishing, was at the center of last week’s big industry story. Evercore Capital Partners LLC, a New York investment firm, announced that it is buying American Media in a $767-million deal and will bring in Pecker as the equity-owning head of the company. As a result, Pecker will resign on March 31 as president and CEO of Hachette Filipacchi Magazines, the third-largest publisher of consumer magazines, including Woman’s Day, Mirabella, George and Elle.
“It’s a good deal and I think David Pecker is the guy to make it work,” said Steve Douglas, general partner in the Douglas/Jones Group, a New York firm that consults magazines on marketing and editorial positioning. “He’s an aggressive guy and a turnaround specialist.”
In an interview, Pecker looked beyond the steady erosion of the papers’ circulation since the 1980s. “When I focus on the tabloid market, I see two papers that have not been promoted and marketed for six years,” he said. “And still, their numbers are high.”
Yes, the number of readers is high, especially when considering the millions of additional, so-called “pass-along” readers who pick up the copies purchased by another. But the circulation levels of the two papers are nowhere near as high as they had been before TV newsmagazines and an array of other publications started serving up much of the same tattle.
Numbers released last week by the Audit Bureau of Circulations show that the Enquirer and Star each have lost half the circulation they had in 1986.
The Enquirer, which had a circulation of 4.4 million, was down to 2.2 million in the second half of last year.
The Star, launched by Rupert Murdoch 25 years ago and later sold by the media baron, was at 3.6 million in 1986 and is now down to 1.8 million.
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Most magazines have been hit hard by declines in newsstand sales during the past decade, as the proliferation of media and of magazines in particular has led to a splintering of audiences. But few publications have been hit as hard as the newsstand-dependent Enquirer and Star. Between 1988 and 1998, their total single-copy sales dropped more than 3.6 million copies a week, according to numbers published last week in Capell’s Circulation Report, an industry newsletter.
Pecker and Austin Beutner, Evercore’s principal and founder, say their first task after completion of the sale is to select a brand-consulting group to help fashion an advertising and marketing campaign.
Beutner spoke of the Enquirer and Star as “great entertainment. . . . There’s the challenge of promoting them properly and the challenge of extending the brands--into the Spanish market, the teen market, internationally and also into a TV franchise.”
Pecker added: “I look at these papers as the best opportunity out there.”
Besides the Enquirer and Star, American Media also publishes Country Weekly (circulation of 361,000) and the Weekly World News (388,000), one of the more sensationalistic supermarket tabloids. One of its latest headlines is: “American Indian Prophecies Are Coming True! 2nd Great Depression . . . Christ’s Return and Much, Much More.”
On a separate matter, while John F. Kennedy Jr. may be of no less interest to the Enquirer and Star under Pecker’s management, the new American Media chairman said he believed that George magazine will be unaffected by his departure from Hachette Filipacchi Magazines. Kennedy, the founding editor in chief of George, and Pecker launched the political monthly under the Hachette flag in 1995.
“Hachette is firmly, 100%-committed to the magazine,” Pecker said. “When Hachette decided to launch George in October 1995, the plan was to spend $25 million over five years. We spent $12 million through October 1998, so we still have $12 million or so to go. It’s not supposed to turn profitable until year four or five and it’s just started the fourth year. And John Kennedy has a contract with the company whether I’m there or not.”
Pecker added that George’s circulation, nearly 404,000 in the second half of last year, was ahead of projections set at the launch.
The Latest Mag Circulations: Michael J. Caruso recently was replaced as editor in chief of Details before his final report card was in hand. And the report card--from the Audit Bureau of Circulations--was pretty good.
Details, which had turned up the temperature by featuring a lot more curvaceousness on its covers and inside during the second half of last year, saw a 9.1% increase in its total circulation during the period, to 526,583, compared to the same six months in 1997. However, single-copy sales on newsstands, usually viewed as a measure of a magazine’s popularity and an editor’s flair, slipped 6.9%.
Caruso’s successor, Mark Golin, is from Maxim. The latter magazine posted a second-half circulation of 733,774, while preparing to increase to 950,000, the circulation it will guarantee advertisers.
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Other magazines showing healthy gains in circulation in the second half of 1998:
Biography, the monthly extension of the A&E; cable channel’s popular “Biography” series, more than doubled its reach, to 429,412. Entertainment Weekly was up 10.4%, to 1.45 million. House & Garden, relaunched by Conde Nast Publications in 1996, grew by 38.6%, to 722,195.
InStyle, the celebs-and-beauty offshoot of People, grew 21.1%, to 1.26 million copies a month. Marie Claire was up 19.7%, to 840,186. P.O.V., another young men’s magazine, gained 52.1% in circulation, to 262,165. Shape improved by 17.8%, to 1.14 million a month.
Roxanne Camron, editor in chief of Teen for the past 25 years, will be leaving that position shortly at a high point for the magazine. It was up 12.8% in circulation, to nearly 2.1 million, in the second half.
Camron’s successor is Tommi Lewis, who has been editor at large since joining from the now-defunct Live! magazine.
Paul Colford’s e-mail address is paul.colford@newsday.com.
