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focus for Premiere
Peter Herbst's out to resuscitate movie monthly
By Jeff Bercovici
Hachette's recent record with magazine turnarounds is not what you'd call encouraging.
First there was Mirabella, the occasionally high-minded women's title that folded last spring after years of casting about for a viable identity.
Then there was George, another magazine that sounded like a good idea at the time but that never managed to make either editorial sense or money.
That leaves Premiere as the last survivor of Hachette's troublesome trio.
The magazine for movie buffs has been drifting farther away from profitability in recent years, bleeding ad pages and struggling mightily on the newsstand.
Given Hachette CEO Jack Kliger's demonstrated willingness to cut losses, it has been easy to imagine Premiere following George and Mirabella into oblivion.
Last week saw a change of command at Premiere as Kliger dumped editor in chief Michael Solomon after only 10 months on the job and replaced him with Peter Herbst, associate editorial director of the company and former editor of Family Life magazine.
Herbst, who retains his position as the company's No. 2 editorial person, has ample experience covering the world of entertainment and celebrities from his days as an editor at Rolling Stone and New York magazine.
Speculation notwithstanding, he vows Hachette is nowhere close to rolling the credits on the 600,000-circulation title.
"This magazine cannot, will not, ever fold," says Herbst.
"American Premiere is the linchpin of a nine-magazine network around the world. Of all the editions, American Premiere is the greatest supplier of material, so Hachette has an enduring commitment to this magazine.
"Our plan is to return it to profitability, and we're going to do that. It may not be next week, but we're going to do that."
Premiere, he says, has suffered from a lack of timeliness of late, a significant handicap given that many of the media outlets it competes with have daily or weekly frequencies.
"We've been a little ahead of time with our covers, so we haven't benefited from the enormous marketing dollars studios put into their films," he says.
Focus has also been a problem.
"Most importantly, the magazine has to have a clear mission and clear message," says Herbst.
"I'm not sure it's had that for the last year, although I've been very pleased with the direction it's taken in the last few months. Our job is to tell readers what's coming out in the next month and the next three months--who's doing what on sets, what pictures Winona Ryder is going to do for her next three projects, or Kevin Smith."
But Premiere has also been hurt by forces beyond its control, says Herbst.
For one thing, after a banner year in 1999, the film industry has been in a prolonged slump, with numerous would-be blockbusters such as "Pearl Harbor" and "Planet of the Apes" disappointing at the box office, and with few sleeper hits like "American Beauty" or "Being John Malkovich."
"I do think it affects newsstand sales," says Herbst. "I don't see how it can't have an effect. When you think about any subject matter, the passion people bring to it is proportional to the quality of the work being done.
"But I think if we're the right kind of magazine, when the quality of movies picks up, we'll be there to benefit from it."
On the advertising side, he points out that Premiere, like many other magazines, has suffered not only from an industry-wide ad slowdown, but also from the pullback of tobacco companies from print advertising, especially in magazines with large numbers of under-18 readers.
Ad pages in Premiere were down 30.1 percent to 259.56 year-to-date through August, and revenue fell 18.7 percent to $13.6 million, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.
Total paid circulation was up 0.6 percent to 607,819 in the first half of the year, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, but single copy sales fell 13.6 percent to 96,617.
September 25, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.
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