Synergy, anyone? As federal regulators work through their last lingering reservations about the America Online-Time Warner merger, the two companies have plans to publish a magazine about technology and the internet for consumers.
    Time Inc.’s Time Digital magazine, a monthly technology magazine that was spun off newsweekly Time last year, will be redesigned and renamed On beginning with the March issue.
    The magazine will be marketed heavily to users of AOL’s internet service, with some 300,000 AOL subscribers receiving free trial subscriptions to On initially. If the giveaways are successful in luring AOL users to buy subscriptions, the offer could be extended to all new customers.
    Selling subscriptions through AOL is expected to be one of the major ways in which Time Inc. benefits from the merger that when approved will create the world’s largest media company. 
    Acquiring circulation is a huge economic burden for publishers, and has become even more expensive in recent years as direct mail response rates have fallen, newsstand distribution has undergone consolidation, and sweepstakes operators such as Publishers Clearinghouse, long a cheap source of bulk subscriptions, have been forced to curtail their activities.
    In October, Time Inc. said that a five-month test program selling subscriptions through AOL had yielded more than 500,000 new subscriptions for Time Inc. magazines. And Andy Sareyan, publisher of the company’s new women’s magazine Real Simple, has said that the title has had much success selling subscriptions on the web. Still, doubts persist about how effective the web will ultimately prove as a vehicle for selling subscriptions.
    On will compete with Yahoo! Internet Life, the fast-growing web culture magazine published by Ziff-Davis in a licensing arrangement with Yahoo. This month Yahoo! Internet Life raised its rate base from 1 million to 1.1 million.
    Time Digital has a circulation of 1 million, although that figure includes a portion of controlled, or unpaid, circulation. The magazine carried 261.91 advertising pages through November of 2000, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. Time Digital first appeared as a supplement to Time in 1995, and was launched as a stand-alone title in April of last year.

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