The 'entrepreneurs' behind Entertainment Weekly

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Nov, 1989 by Alfred Balk

The 'entrepreneurs' behind Entertainment Weekly

NEW YORK CITY--Jeff Jarvis and Michael J. Klingensmith, employees of the venerable Time Inc. Magazines Co., may have the security of working for one of the largest magazine publishing companies, but they know what it's like to be entrepreneurs.

The team behind Entertainment Weekly, the all-encompassing entertainment guide to be launched this February, spent evenings and weekends gestating the project while holding down full-time jobs. Their employer eventually became interested enough to pay for the magazine's design and testing.

Today the two, in their mid-30s, are guiding Time's newest offspring.

A departure for Time

The incubation method is a departure for Time. "It was not a magazine developmnt bureaucracy that gave birth to this," notes Jarvis, EW's managing editor. "It was two people who had an idea, who believed in it, who sold it--passionately--and who brought in other people who fleshed it out, gave it birth, gave it life. There was money invested, but not in the old sense."

In 1984, three years after coming to People Weekly as an entertainment writer, Jeff Jarvis sent a memo to Time's management which outlined a new magazine idea.

That same year, Michael J. Klingensmith, general manager of Time Worldwide, had the same idea. In Manhattan's labyrinthine Time & Life tower, he and Jarvis had never met. He, too, wrote a memo proposing the magazine, and is now EW's publisher.

By any standards, both men are on fast tracks. Jarvis becomes EW's editor after holding only a writing position--a rare feat at Time. Klingensmith already has held nine Time Inc. management jobs, including chief financial officer.

In a way, they rank as an executive "odd couple." Jarvis worked on five newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and San Francisco Examiner, but claims no magazine experience prior to People. Klingensmith is an MBA from the University of Chicago, who loves sports and was recruited by Time Inc. directly out of school.

Both he and Jarvis, however, share a passion for the idea that brought them together. Now an estimated $30 million investment rides on their brainchild.

Actually, the stakes are higher: Psychologically speaking, Time could use a hit. The firm's last major weekly launch, People, was started 15 years ago. In the interim, it has aborted TV Cable Week (estimated write-off: $47 million) and, after testing, left Picture Week stillborn (estimated cost: over $25 million).

Time then disbanded its formal magazine development group and went on to emphasize joint ventures--the McCall's/Working Woman Group, Whittle Communications, Parenting, Hippocrates, Southern Progress--and spinoffs, notably Sports Illustrated for Kids.

'The ultimate entertainment guide'

Jarvis' January 1984 memo proposing EW read: "Magazine Proposal: The Ultimate Entertainment Guide ... a magazine that would come to the aid of the consumer in a very confusing time. Today there is simply too much to choose from."

Jarvis knows whereof he speaks. As People's TV columnist, he watched up to 40 hours of videotapes and TV a week, and came to realize that the weekly's "Picks and Pans" section only covers the tip of the entertainment iceberg.

The memo elicited no response.

Klingensmith, meanwhile, was germinating a similar idea, with the title Currents. "I saw an explosion, starting with cable TV, the advent of the VCR, then video stores on almost every block in Manhattan," he says. When a movie came out, I started asking, is it worth going out and standing in line, or should I wait for it on HBO or a tape? Everybody I knew also listened to music and read books. But their needs were serviced only vertically, in Rolling Stone, or Premiere, or buffs' books."

In October 1985, he said as much in a memo to superiors Henry Grunwald and Kelso Sutton. Headed "A New Magazine Idea," it began, "The attached [reminds me] of a magazine idea I once discussed briefly with [former magazine development head] Marshall Leob.... The time now seems right to finally put it down on paper."

Klingensmith's memo also elicited no enthusiasm.

Nearly nine months later, in July 1986, Jarvis--still unaware of Klingensmith's efforts--tried again. Attaching a new cover sheet to his slightly condensed version of the 1984 proposal, he directed it to group publisher Christopher Meigher.

Unknown to Jarvis, this time management saluted the idea and included it with others presented to focus groups. Still the proposals remained dormant.

'You should get together'

Well into 1987, Klingensmith reminded Meigher, who then headed one of two magazine development groups, of his two-year-old memo. Meigher, former publisher of People, remembered having seen Jarvis' memo. "Hey," he said, "there's a guy at People with virtually the same idea. You should get together."

Around Thanksgiving they had lunch in the building's Hemisphere Club, and were astonished by the affinity of their ideas. The two wrote a business and editorial prospectus, which they submitted to management in January 1988, which included "bare-bones financials" based on the firm's magazine development model.