When the death rattle begins for gossip magazines, it will start right at Life & Style Weekly.
* Editors leaving.
* Rate base cut.
* In Touch's publisher adds this magazine to his job.
* No buzz.
The executives at Bowel, whoops, Bauer Publishing are ruthless cost cutters and if the newsstand keeps dropping, it will fall right into the Reaper's waiting arms.
ODDS OF SURVIVAL: 20% and dropping, like Jennifer Aniston's dignity!
Fresh intelligence is now dead intelligence. Radar, in its third iteration, is now dead. Again. Quick, somebody keep George Romero away from these people so they don't get any ideas of walking the earth!
How do you like their latest slogan on what is their final issue: "Pop Culture For Smart People?" There are just not enough smart people to support Radar.
Once founder Maer Roshan said they had one more year left of money, you knew (and I knew) they were Reaper-ready.
Radar's ads never budged for the past two years, as little as there were. They recycled Tom Cruise, Lindsay Lohan and worst colleges stories. Now we'll be left with poor Michelle Obama's angry face looking out at us, as if to say, "I told you this would be the last issue!"
Nobody understood why Maer Roshan would launch the magazine for a third time and just keep it as a web site. After all, the web site gets far more attention and traffic than the magazine. The Reaper did read Roshan quoted in the New York Observer saying "We are open forever."
Now his wish has come true, but in a deal his investors made with my friend the devil, the Radar web site was bought by American Media, publishers of The National Enquirer and The Star. Some years ago, it was known that Roshan was working out a deal for AMI to publish Radar 1.0 but there seemed to have been some falling out there.
Now, David Pecker has added on some more debt to his insane ledger sheets and in return, he gets Radar's web site after all! It's too bad Roshan won't be coming along with the package because The Reaper would have loved to sit in on their budget meetings.
So off we go with Radar, down, down, down, a little of Golden Earring's Radar Love playing loud as we tip our hat to that happy team of Ron Burkle and Yusef Jackson who should focus on supermarkets and beer, and not magazine publishing. Or else, you get to meet me.
Suddenly, it's getting crowded in here and I've got to hire more boatswains on the River Styx just to carry David Pecker's roadkill!
As hinted at a mere week ago, but it's now real, Celebrity Living Weekly has been put out of its misery along with two other AMI titles, MPH and Shape en Espagnol.
There is only so much celebrity crap the public can fork over money for, and something had to go.
Congratulations to Samir "Mr. Magazine" Husni for picking Celebrity Living Weekly as one of "2005's most interesting magazine launches," only a mere week or so ago. What's interesting about Celebrity Living Weekly is why it was created at all.
MPH, which was AMI's attempt at doing a Maxim-style car book, had no chance with automotive ads drying up. And Shape En Espagnol -- well, leave it to AMI to bungle a magazine in one of the fastest growing ethnic markets in the US.
What we need to do now is make some room down here for Mr. Pecker. Someplace where he can't take on any more debt and hide from board members seeking his skin.
David Pecker
ODDS OF SURVIVAL: 20% and dropping fast!
I smell a visitor coming!
Smells like the umpteenth celebrity magazine that could not break out of the pack may be ready to cough up a keel over.
Gawker broke the news that things are looking <cough> grim for Celebrity Living Weekly, AMI's third or fifth entry into the field.
Ironic that this magazine may printing its last page on the very day that Professor Samir "Mr. Magazine" Husni -- self-professed know-it-all of magazine launches -- declared Celebrity Living Weekly as one of "the top 5 magazine launches of 2005." With this kind of publishing insight and knowledge, if he was picking your magazine as launch of the year, you'd better get your resume out quick!
* Latecomer in an overcrowded field.
* Newsstand sales, the lifeblood of this category, not up to expectations.
* Cover price cut from $3.29 to $1.99 to stay competitive.
* Magazine size shrunk.
* Layoffs.
* Ad agency WPP says OK! owner Richard Desmond owes him millions from helping launch US edition (Guardian).
SURVIVAL ODDS: 10%
