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life after Big Lou
Editor: We're like a general interest science mag
By Jeff Bercovici
The launch of Space.com in July 1999 was one of the most closely watched events of the dot.com boom.
It boasted all the familiar elements: a big-name figurehead, in the person of financial anchor Lou Dobbs, oceans of venture capital, and a business plan that was as ambitious as it was vague.
Big things seemed imminent.
Then came the dot.com crash, followed by a steep falloff in the ad economy. Dobbs returned to CNN, following the departure of some big names from Space.com.
For those who still bothered to notice, Space.com began looking increasingly like another run-down, horizontally-targeted content play in a business that's increasingly fixated on niche audiences.
To the question, is there life after Lou Dobbs, the answer seemed to be no.
But according to Fred Abatemarco, editor in chief for the site and its various print properties, what you're seeing is actually a company that is just now getting ready to ignite its second stage.
In August, Space.com will relaunch Space Illustrated, the bimonthly print magazine that debuted last summer, published in partnership with Hearst Custom Publishing.
And if all goes well on this and other fronts, the slimmed-down company expects to be profitable on a cash-flow basis by the end of the fourth quarter, a goal set by Dobbs and reiterated by his successor, CEO John Ferrara.
Before that can happen, however, Space.com will have to address two questions it has never answered convincingly:
How much real consumer demand is there in these days of space apathy for a far-ranging but scientifically basic site about the cosmos?
And how much appeal would the audience of such a site hold for advertisers, who so far have shown little but disdain for general-interest sites?
Abatemarco joined Space.com one year ago after a decade as editor in chief of Hearst's Popular Science.
He oversees all the content that appears on the site, in Space Illustrated, and in Space News, the aerospace industry weekly that Space.com purchased last October from Gannett.
In Abatemarco's view, Space.com's challenge is the same as that of a host of other struggling new media startups: a sluggish ad economy and an online advertising market in which supply far outstrips demand.
"Our fate is very much attached to the macro picture," says Abatemarco.
It's a fate to which Dobbs, though no longer active in managing the company, remains carefully attuned, he says.
"He's got a full-time job over at CNN, but that's not to say we don't hear from him on a regular basis. Lou has definitely got a large personal financial stake in the company and a high personal interest."
Earlier reports suggested that Space.com has had trouble attracting visitors, but Abatemarco says that has not been the case, at least not recently.
He says the site hosted 1.5 million unique viewers in April for a total of 20 million pages, a 300 percent increase from April 2000.
Demographically, Abatemarco says, Space.com's audience resembles that of a large-circulation general-science magazine such as Popular Science or Discover. He disputes the common wisdom that such a broadly-distributed audience is necessarily a harder sell to advertisers than a smaller, more focused one.
"We get real high marks from advertisers whenever we present them with our demo," he says, noting that IBM, Intel, Kodak and Lockheed are among the site's advertisers.
"We're doing everything right if you go by traffic. We've attracted an audience, we're holding an audience, we're building an audience. All those metrics in a good solid economy would have us rubbing money on our faces."
Similarly, Abatemarco says, Space Illustrated was showing promising circulation growth before it suspended publication following the February issue, its third.
The magazine went on hiatus after Space.com decided to dissolve its partnership with Hearst Custom Publishing in a move aimed at saving money.
"We had to look carefully and say how can we do this without totally burning bundles of dollars," he says.
When Space Illustrated relaunches on Aug. 7, the emphasis will be on frugality.
The print run has been slashed from 150,000 to 50,000, and subscription marketing is being done almost exclusively via the internet.
In its initial incarnation, Space Illustrated was rough indeed, with stories seemingly selected at random and geared variously to children, young adults and parents.
But Abatemarco says editorial tinkering will be minimal, citing the title's above-average newsstand sell-through as evidence of the formula's success.
June 25, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
- Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.
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