Will The New York Times Change Its Slogan to "All The Wine That's Fit To Drink?" and Other Thoughts - Steve Blacker - MediaBizBloggers

In an attempt to replace steep declines in advertising revenue, The New York Timesis launching a New York Times Wine Club. It will offer members fairly flexible options as long as they order six bottles of wine. The six-pack will cost either $90 or $180 and club members can have their wine delivered every one, two or three months. Supposedly the venture is to be independent of the Times'Food and Dining editorial section to avoid potential conflicts, yet the Times'wine and food related editorial stories will run on the Web site? Rather than trying to compete with Sherry Lehman and Morell, wouldn't the Timesbe much better off in improving its print and web products?

How come AOL was able to quickly hire top talent and now has ten of its eighty Web sites in Technorati's top 100? Many of these Web sites are brand new. Why does it take major magazine and newspaper publishers so long to attempt the same with established media brands? Perhaps it's because these companies are still print driven and not investing enough to attract the necessary Digital talent; or even if they do they never want to hire enough people to make it happen.

Good Housekeepingmagazine needs to get its Web house in order! The Financial News site 24/7 Wall Street graded the Good Housekeeping Web site a D-, the lowest grade given any magazine. Reasons were: "Awkwardly designed homepage, a jumble of content mixed with distracting offers and online promotions and photos so poorly cropped that they are over-layered on top of the text." No seal of approval for this Web site! The highest rated magazine Web site is TVGuide.com with an A+. Unfortunately it is separate from the magazine.

Contrary to rumors in the New York Post, I doubt that Page Rense is going to be forced to leave Architectural Digestunless she wants to. AD's 50% ad page fall-off is much more a reflection on the ad sales staff than the editorial product. Plus the competitors at Hachette and Hearst just have much stronger publishers and marketing programs.

Unless my math is wrong, for new subscribers the cost to add WSJ.com to your 52 week print subscription is just 40 cents a week, or $20.80 a year. Is this a bold enough move on Rupert Murdoch's part?

Business Weekhas been one of the most mismanaged, over-staffed global publications in the world. Its editorial staff was close to 200 people. The product lost its sharpness and "must read" status once editor Stephen Shepard departed. The content now resembles a small town variety show. The brand equity is still there and a savvy venture capital group should be able to easily turn things around once they are free of the current "death wish" culture.

People's cellular hotline! Peoplemagazine's mobile channel is logging in 18 million page views a month. People's Celebrity News Tracks is the main attraction. The channel is so successful that it is being launched in Spanish, a first for Time Inc. InStyle'smakeovers have attracted 50 million people to date, with Twitter being a major pipeline.

Way ahead of the Times! The Financial Timesstarted charging readers for access to its Web site in 2002. While FT.com has only 117,000 paying customers worldwide it charges $300 a year for access in the United States. Of interest, for another $100 one gets the U.S. print edition. Thanks to John Ridding, FT's CEO, strategy on-line sub revenue has grown 30 percent this year. By believing in its editorial product the Financial Timeshas not only generated more revenue from paid subscriptions but made its site more valuable to advertisers.

Nobody asked me, but why don't magazines sell more than just a subscription with their endless renewal offerings? Many consumer magazines such as Gourmet, Travel & Leisure, Good Housekeeping, Elle and The New Yorkerare club-like in their brand equity and appeal. What if special offerings of goods and services were part of my magazine subscription? Let's say an audio manufacturer wanted to clear out last year's models and was willing to offer them on an exclusive basis to the subscribers of The New Yorker? Or if Prada offered the fashion conscious readers of Elleits closeouts on an exclusive basis? The magazines would receive a percentage of the merchandise sold.

Eat healthy and Go Green! SELFmagazine's "20 Ways to Eat Healthier Right Now" was the most read feature in the second quarter of all magazines measured by Affinity's Vista Print Rating Service. Number 2 was U.S. News & World Report's"The Green Energy Economy."

Will Nielsen finally be forced to clean up its TV rating system? If Nielsen management continues to be stupidly arrogant in response to industry concerns it could jeopardize the total business. This time around the challenge comes from a strong consortium of major clients such as Proctor & Gamble, AT&T and Unilever, plus Starcom MediaVest and GroupM media agencies. In the past the complaints came mostly from the major TV networks and Cable. PREDICTION: Nielsen will continue to play stupid. A new and major rating system will emerge within 18 months and make Nielsen as obsolete as a 1960's Oldsmobile.

Are too many publishers ignoring the growth of the Hispanic market in the U.S.? People en Espanolcarries twice as many ad pages (79.3) in its August 16th issue as US Weekly(39.3)! As a matter of fact, People en Espanolled the pack, carrying 50% more pages than People (62.7) and 60% more than Rolling Stone(43.5).

Why does one of my favorite magazines, Esquire, charge me less than a pack a gum for each subscription issue they send me? At $6.97 for a one year's subscription, each issue costs me just 58 cents! How can magazines realistically start to charge for Digital content when they do such a poor job charging for print content?

If anyone can make people pay for online content it's Steve Brill. The savvy media veteran has supposedly signed up 506 newspapers and magazines for his new Journalism Online launch this fall. I don't understand how this will work or why. But it is a positive step and a great learning opportunity. If Brill and his partners Gordon Crovitz and Leo Hindery Jr. pull this off, they will create a major new media empire.

Steve's new book You Can't Fall Off The Floor - The Insiders' Guide to Re-Inventing Yourself and Your Career chronicles his 50 year career working for over 25 different companies with 189 lessons learned and insider tips from Gayle King, Cathie Black, Chuck Townsend and 28 others; Blacker is still going strong today as a partner in Frankfurt & Blacker Solutions, LLC. His web site is blacker-reinventions.com and e-mail address is blackersolutions@aol.com

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