The Producers

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, August 1, 2002

Byline: REPORTED BY THE FOLIO: STAFF

rolling stone SPEEDS UP

Wenner Media certainly is grabbing its share of headlines lately. First, chairman Jan Wenner brought in legendary women's magazine editor Bonnie Fuller to save US. Then he recruited former FHM laddie-in-chief, Ed Needham, to run his flagship. The press, in a feeding frenzy over the masthead shakeups, is chronicling every battle in Fuller's war with People and endlessly debating Needham's threat to unseat Rolling Stone's 6,000-word screeds.

But behind the headlines, Wenner announced another major, albeit less glamorous, transition. In preparation for its makeover, Rolling Stone moved to a fast close schedule in July. What used to be a six-week turnaround from close night to newsstand has shrunk to two and a half weeks.

"The fact of the matter is I don't know why it takes six weeks from the time you close a magazine to when it actually goes on sale," says senior vice president and general manager Kent Brownridge, explaining the lag time between bites of his lunch. The attitude was, "We can't do it this way because we've never done that before," he laughs. "I think the main reason magazines do it is because they don't want editors hanging around with nothing to do for a month. They sort of spread the work out and people say it's just always been that way."

But Brownridge, who oversees Wenner's production cast, decided the cycle was "ridiculous." Not just for his books, but for the industry as a whole. "Today we're all digital. Back in the paste-up days, when people actually glued stuff to the boards, we couldn't have done this. But the technology got us to a level that people had only dreamed of before. And look at the publishing schedule of most monthly magazines - no one else is doing anything."

Brownridge calls Wenner's breakthrough accidental. "One day we just sort of had this epiphany, which was 'Why don't we do for Rolling Stone what we do for US magazine?' We started looking at the reasons why we couldn't, and we eliminated them all. Same money, same staff, we just redid the schedule."

There is a limit, Brownridge cautions. "You have to determine how fast you can truck everything. We have an advantage because we staffed up when we took US weekly, so now we have a very sophisticated department of people to do our distribution." You also need a printer with enough bindery power. "If you have a high-run book, you can push it through pretty quickly. But if you're sitting there grinding away in the bindery for a week and a half, this isn't going to work."

The reduced turnaround time is causing some commotion on the production side. But for Wenner, the benefits outweigh the short-term chaos. The increased flexibility allows the magazine to take last-minute ad pages - a much needed option in a cutthroat advertising market. Because as Brownridge notes, certain ad categories, such as entertainment, won't even consider a publication that doesn't offer a fast close.

Mike McHale, senior principal and group media director, Optimedia International, says, "We love [Rolling Stone's new schedule]. Absolutely. I think all of the monthlies should close their closing date gaps. That's the biggest problem with any print medium - often times you have two-month lead times. When you've got creative ready and you're trying to do tactical stuff, you just can't. It's funny because The Wall Street Journal prints two million copies overnight every night. They find a way."

But the fast close could potentially hurt Rolling Stone on the ad front, and Brownridge knows it. "Let's say it's October, and by that time most of the monthlies have closed the December issue," he says. "The pages have been placed, but the economy takes a nasty turn for the worse and people start cutting their ad budgets. The few magazines that haven't closed December are going to get whacked." On the flip side, if it looks like it's going to be a great Christmas and advertisers go on a last-minute spending spree, they're going to go with the magazines that are still open, he says. With the fast close, "You win some and you lose some. But you win more than you lose."

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE DOWNSIZED

There's a bit of a best-and-worst-of-times sentiment over at Primedia's Agribusiness division, according to Eric Meester, director of production. He ticks off the good first: Technology is making life easier. The October 2001 switch to digital workflows has given the department more wiggle room in production cycles. "We save two to three days right off the bat," he says. And the switch to the PDF format is saving the company about $60 a page. Now for the bad: The advertising downturn has eclipsed both time and financial savings. Fewer ads mean leaner books, and that limits the department's ability to take last-minute pages. Until revenues rebound, production downgrades - in the form of shrinking trim sizes and cheaper paper - are mandatory.

A year ago, the production department, which oversees 13 books, including three from the textile/apparel division, changed the trim sizes from 8 x 10 3/4 to 7 7/8 x 10 3/4. The paper in the body stocks of titles, including National Hog Farmer, BEEF and Soybean Digest, is about to go down as well, from a 40-lb. to a 38-lb. weight, says Meester. And for a few books, the body stock will change from a coated groundwood to a supercalendered SCA-plus, he adds, which has already created a challenge. "The paper doesn't have a coating on it, so it will not print the same, in spite of what everyone will tell you," he says. "You can tell there is a difference between the two- and four-color images. There's not as much shadow detail as there is with a coated stock."