Your blog authority on cheap magazine subscriptions.
Friday, March 31, 2006
Reader's Digest Buys Allrecipes.com
The Reader's Digest Association announced Friday it would acquire Allrecipes.com, a community-based Web site geared for home cooks, for $66 million.
The eight year-old Allrecipies.com averages 6 million unique monthly users, according to Reader's Digest Magazine. The site, which has 1.8 million registered users, serves as a food-centric online social network, enabling home cooks to share and discover recipes.
Allrecipes.com will become a portal for all the company's food-related Web properties -- including the Web sites of the magazines Taste of Home and Every Day with Rachael Ray -- while delivering multiple cross-promotional opportunities, according to Eric Schrier, the association's president and CEO.
"Our acquisition of Allrecipes.com will provide us with a valuable digital platform to further leverage our position as the country's leading food and cooking publisher," he said. "It will enable us to bring together online communities from the various RDA properties using the common platform of an industry-leading food and cooking affinity."
Reader's Digest Magazine said that it expects the sale to close by the end of its fiscal fourth quarter, June 30, 2006.
Seventeen Magazine editor in chief Atoosa Rubenstein hosted a press conference in New York for the White House drug czar to discuss new findings that girls are catching up to boys in use of illicit substances and alcohol. Jen Steele, winner of the Hearst title’s MTV reality show Miss Seventeen, made her first appearance at the event and spoke about how drug- and alcohol-related crimes have directly affected her: Both of her parents are incarcerated for drug and alcohol related abuses.
The fun, fearless, female hit the airwaves on March 14, 2006 for the first time. Cosmo Radio (of famed Cosmopolitan Magazine) launched with a live broadcast and breakfast reception (with pop star Natasha Bedingfield performing) at Sirius Satellite Radio Studios. The female bible can now be heard on Sirius Satellite Radio channel 111. Attending the event were Donna Lagani, publisher, Cosmopolitan, pop star Natasha Bedingfield, Kate White, editor in chief, Comsopolitan, Kelly McNamara, VP PR Armani Fragrances.
When viewers tune into TV shopping network QVC, they’re usually looking for a stellar deal on a flatscreen television or a Veg-o-Matic food processor. But recently, West Chester, Pa.-based QVC, the country’s largest TV retailer that in 2004 boasted $5.7 billion in sales, has become a new channel by which publishers are trying to sell magazine subscriptions.
First to test the waters was Condé Nast’s Lucky Magazine, which began its QVC partnership two years ago. More recently, sister title Allure Magazine and Time Inc.’s People Magazine have worked with QVC. The QVC foray is the latest effort by publishers to come up with creative ways to lure new readers as the newsstand becomes increasingly crowded and the cost of direct-mail campaigns steadily climbs.
“Direct mail is becoming a far less effective tool; people are so inundated with things in their mailbox,” said Coleen Kuehn, executive vp, chief strategist for MPG. “Direct mail is a push strategy, whereas QVC is more of a pull strategy, drawing in people who are looking to buy something. It’s a more welcomed offer than it would be in the mailbox.”
Print partnerships with QVC, which declined comment on this story, tend to range from experimental to long-term.
Lucky lends its editors to the network for segments for fashion trends; when Lucky-endorsed items are purchased by callers, QVC ships them a special edition of the magazine with customized network listings. QVC also offers $12 Lucky subs on its Web site.
Lucky reached 100,000 readers through the program last year, confirmed a Condé Nast spokesperson. “Our editors regularly appear on TV to be experts in their fields,” noted the CN rep. “QVC is one more example of this. In keeping with the format of QVC, we have also been given the opportunity to offer subscriptions during these appearances.”
Allure Magazine this month began featuring its editors on QVC to discuss beauty trends and now sells its subscriptions on the QVC site.
People Magazine in February opted to directly sell subscriptions during a two-minute segment. A People representative called the offer “experimental” and said “a decision to move forward on QVC has not been determined.” The rep declined to provide any sales figures.
In addition to magazines getting face time in 87 million QVC homes, the network’s demos mostly mesh with the magazines’ target audiences. Fashion-forward women comprise 75 percent of QVC’s audience, according to Mediamark Research Inc. And its median household income is well over $75,000, according to Kuehn.
That said, the median age of QVC viewers is 50, closer to People’s median age of 43, and much older than Allure’s and Lucky’s median ages of 32 and 33, respectfully. “Mothers could be buying the magazines for their daughters,” opined Kuehn.
Nevertheless, QVC’s female-heavy audience could be beneficial for older titles such as Meredith Corp.’s Ladies’ Home Journal.
Despite the promise of a new avenue to sell magazine subscriptions, “there’s probably a point where there’s overkill,” cautions Dan Capell, editor of Capell’s Circulation Report. “How many of these magazines can you have on in the course of a day?”
Making a billion just isn't what it used to be. In Forbes Magazine's inaugural ranking of the world’s richest people 20 years ago, Forbes uncovered some 140 billionaires. Just three years ago there were 476. This year the list is a record 793. They’re worth a combined $2.6 trillion, up 18% since last March. Their average net worth: $3.3 billion. Learn more here.
Child Magazine and Parents Magazine provide a comprehensive package of family oriented parenting information. Cheap Magazine Subscriptions, the only place to pick up reliable coupon codes on your favorite magazine subscriptions and packages, brings you Parents Magazine, as well as, Child Magazine for a total price of $4.50 (just 2 cents an issue). Simply redeem coupon code BSXF2P during your checkout after adding both magazines to your cart. You save $24.45.
Long considered untouchable, men’s monthlies such as Dennis Pub- lishing’s Maxim Magazine and Stuff Magazine and Emap’s FHM Magazine cruised through the late 1990s and early 2000s by offering up a healthy dose of their trademark “beer and babes” formula. And few other titles targeting young guys came up with anything viable to challenge them.
But now, as Maxim Magazine and Stuff Magazine in particular are seeing their circulations plateau, a new generation of publications are preparing to take them on.
Two new titles—Time Inc.’s Office-Pirates.com, which launched last week, and Hachette Filipacchi Media’s Shock Magazine, which is due out May 31—will offer content online and in a weekly print magazine, respectively.
