Barbara O’Dair could be forgiven if she has mixed feelings about taking over at Teen People.
    On the one hand, it's easily one of the most successful new magazines of the last several years.
   On the other hand, O'Dair's predecessor, Christina Ferrari, is a tough act to have to follow, having guided Teen People to profitability with few of the stumbles that usually accompany a Time Inc. launch.
   What's more, today's teen category is very different from the one Teen People launched into three years ago, with more and bigger competitors grappling for a dwindling pool of untapped readers--and all against the backdrop of a softening advertising market. 
   Given these factors, it's not surprising that O'Dair, who was tagged as the new managing editor last week, is starting with modest ambitions: to keep Teen People moving along the same path it has followed so far.
   "Christina has done a wonderful job capturing teen concerns and the teen," she says of her predecessor, who resigned in January to follow her boyfriend, former Time Inc. editorial director Henry Muller, to Europe.
    "I am going to build on what she has done with the coverage of teen culture."
    Though O’Dair’s last gig was a six month stint as executive editor at Harper’s Bazaar, she says getting into the Teen People mindset will be no problem. 
    "Pop culture has always been close to me. I don’t have any trouble accessing that part of myself," says O'Dair, who has also worked at Rolling Stone, Details, Entertainment Weekly and US.
    But sustaining Teen People's momentum may require more than a working knowledge of boy bands. Paid circulation, which had been steadily rising, backslid by 3.9 percent  to 1.6 million in the second half of 2000, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. That includes a 10.3 percent drop in newsstand sales.
    The stoppage in growth seems likely to be, at least in part, a result of increased competition from other titles.
   Before Teen People came along, the teen category was the province of second-tier publishers: special interest publishers Primedia and Petersen, which published Seventeen and Teen, respectively, and women's magazine shop Gruner & Jahr USA, publisher of YM. (Teen is now published by Emap USA.) 
   But the major magazine houses apparently found the success of Teen People inspiring. Hearst followed in 1999 with Cosmogirl, a young-teen spinoff of Cosmopolitan. Then, last fall, Conde Nast tested Teen Vogue, with another test issue scheduled for the spring. This fall, Hachette Filipacchi will debut Elle Girl.
    Despite all the optimism, however, there are indications that the ad picture for the category may be worsening. 
    Both YM and Teen suffered page losses in 2000 amid one of the best advertising economies ever. And with the ad slowdown now in full effect, 2001 remains a big question mark for teen titles as for other magazines. 
    Teen People was up 12 percent in ad pages in 2000, with 1,044.32. Ad revenue for the title was up 41.2 percent to $67.3 million.

-Niharika Desai is a staff writer for Media Life.

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