Dennis Plunges Into Music, News Markets

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Feb, 2001 by Cindy Gillis

Geoff Van Dyke and Susan Thea Posnock contributed to this report.

The British publisher beats rival Emap to the music market with Blender, and shakes up the news sector with The Week.

While other media companies are skittish about the slowing economy and reining in resources, Dennis Publishing is boldly pushing into the news and music magazine markets.

Blender, the quarterly general-interest music magazine set to launch this spring, will be infused with the brazen attitude Dennis Publishing's men's titles, Maxim and Stuff, have become famous for. Still, some question whether any new title will have what it takes to shake up a category that has seen only moderate growth or dipping ad pages in a year that, overall, produced healthy advertising gains. Through November, Spin's ad pages increased a mere 3.7 percent over the same time period in 1999, and Rolling Stone's pages dropped 5.1 percent, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.

The Blender launch is most likely a preemptive strike, since Emap USA--publisher of Maxim rival FHM--is also interested in the category. In fact, Dennis recruited Andy Pemberto, former editor of Emap's British music magazine Q, to be the top editor at Blender.

Emap USA said Q would top its list of British imports when the company set up shop in the United States after acquiring The Petersen Companies in 1999. Emap CEO Tom Moloney admits that Dennis' plunge into the U.S. music market puts it a few paces ahead of his own company, but insists that the companies are in business, not a race. "We don't spend hours of every day, of every week, of every month, comparing ourselves to Dennis Publishing," he says.

Still, Moloney says, he'll track the Blender launch closely. "I'm really sure there's an opportunity for the music sector to have a more vital press, but I don't know quite know how to deliver it right now."

A "smart little magazine"

Dennis is also importing The Week, a newsmagazine that condenses the week's events into short blurbs. And here, too, the British publisher is staking a claim in a struggling category. Publishers Information Bureau adpage tallies show the country's top-three newsweeklies slid in 2000 as compared to the previous year (see chart, opposite page).

But Dennis president Stephen Colvin is focusing on how The Week differs from the current offerings. "The Week is the perfect Cliff Notes for any very busy person in this age of increasing information overload. That's not what the existing newsweeklies are about. They do cover news, but they're very much lifestyle magazines," he says.

Newsweekly publishers say they don't consider The Week a competitor. "I think competition begins when they develop a significant audience," says Bruce Hallett, president of Time. "And clearly, they've got zero right now."

U.S. News & World Report editor Stephen G. Smith says The Week poses little threat to the big-three newsweeklies. "I think it's a smart little magazine; I like it," Smith says, likening its size to that of The New Republic rather than the big-three newsweeklies. "The scale really is so different; it really is comparing an elephant to a mouse."

But Smith is not writing off Felix Dennis completely. "He's got vision and he's got guts, and if anybody can make a new title go in the newsmagazine category in this country, it's Felix Dennis," Smith says.

At 40 pages per week, including six ad pages, subscriptions to The Week will cost $75 annually, with an initial distribution of 150,000. According to Colvin, Dennis has earmarked up to $17 million for the launch, and the magazine's primary revenue stream will be circulation.