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over to Seventeen
Ex-Teen pub's job: Fend off YM and Teen People
By Jeff Bercovici
Teen is gone, but its publisher, Ellen Abramowitz, is sticking around at Primedia, where she was named publisher of Seventeen yesterday.
Abramowitz succeeds Linda Platzner, who was promoted to president and group publisher of the Primedia Magazine Teen Sales and Marketing unit last fall.
The move is something of a homecoming for Abramowitz, who served as associate publisher of Seventeen before moving over to Teen. She has also held ad sales positions at Working Woman and Sassy.
She arrives at a magazine that, while still the biggest teen title in terms of both circulation and revenue, has found itself somewhat on the defensive recently, reacting to the rapid growth of Teen People and the resurgence of YM.
Seventeen struck a preemptive blow against its competitors in September when it hired Anne Marie Iverson away from YM, where, as editor in chief, she was credited with turning around the magazine’s fortunes.
Under Iverson, Seventeen's ad pages were down 9 percent, to 114.6, in the first two months of 2002, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.
In the same period, YM's pages were down 20.5 percent, to 50.1, and Teen People's were off 40.5 percent, to 47.8.
Seventeen’s ad revenue was up 3 percent to $10.9 million through February, according to PIB.
Teen, which became part of Primedia after that company acquired Emap USA last summer, got a thorough makeover last year, going from a general-interest teen magazine to one that concentrated on the areas of shopping and celebrity.
But last week, Primedia announced it was shutting down Teen and devoting some of its resources to Seventeen. Teen subscribers will receive Seventeen after the magazine suspends publication in May.
Last October, Primedia reorganized its Youth Entertainment Group, cutting back the publishing frequency of Teen Beat, Tiger Beat, Bop and 16.
Seventeen's total paid circulation in the second half of last year was 2,333,126, down 1.8 percent, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Its newsstand sales fell 19.1 percent to 485,172.
March 13, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life
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