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EXPN Magazine
That's X, not S, targeting action sports nuts
By Jeff Bercovici
While competitors at the Summer X Games were soaring, skating and scaling their way to glory earlier this month, ESPN and Hearst Magazines were embarking on their own adventure.
After eight months of waiting and false starts, they have published a prototype issue of EXPN Magazine, a spinoff of ESPN the Magazine dedicated entirely to "action sports" such as skateboarding, surfing, rock climbing and BMX biking.
Though few of the athletes inside will be familiar to anyone over the age of 25, in appearance EXPN is closely modeled on ESPN the Magazine, with copious graphics, lists, statistics and charts and plenty of visual humor.
Besides going out to advertisers, the magazine was on sale at X Games events in Philadelphia and is available in Barnes & Noble and B. Dalton bookstores.
The prototype includes a blow-in comment card that asks readers, among other things, to rate the magazine "on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being 'Awesome' and 1 being 'Horrible.'"
EXPN will go into regular publication in February with a bimonthly initial frequency and a rate base of 150,000.
Originally, EXPN was to be one of two new action sports magazines debuting this month. Through its custom publishing division, Hearst also had plans to introduce R660, a magazine/catalog hybrid for males in their teens and early 20s.
As with EXPN, early plans for R660 were revised once the media economy began to sour late last year. The launch date was pushed back from November 2000 to August 2001, and the initial circulation was slashed from 750,000 to 500,000.
Then, in May of this year, work on the launch was quietly dropped altogether.
"We didn't think the advertising market was ripe for a new product," says Paul Berger, president of the now-defunct Rule 660 Communications, which was to have published the magazine along with Hearst.
Berger is reluctant to disclose specifics about the decision, saying that revealing too much could compromise his new business venture.
He insists that it had nothing to do with the imminent launch of EXPN, saying he believes there's enough reader demand to support two or more action sports titles.
"From a consumer standpoint there are certainly several marketing opportunities there," says Berger. "From an advertiser standpoint this was just not the best time."
Other factors may have influenced the decision as well, in particular the emphasis of R660's business plan on a strong web component, says Michael Hurley, head of Hearst Custom Marketing.
"He got a mixed reaction from the marketplace, but at the same time the market was wary of dot.com plays and anything else in that space," says Hurley.
There was also a good deal of uncertainty about how best to distribute R660, with an all-free model eventually succeeding one that called for a mixture of free and paid circulation. There was further uncertainty about a plan to sell merchandise directly to readers in a catalog section at the back of the magazine, a concept that may have been off-putting to advertisers.
In addition to EXPN, R660 would also have been competing with TransWorld Stance, a 240,000-circulation young-men’s lifestyle magazine launched last year by TransWorld Media, which publishes magazines about skateboarding, snowboarding and BMX biking.
August 27, 2001
© 2001 Media Life-
Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.
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