Metropolitan Home moves to Hachette

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Dec 1, 1992 by Keith J. Kelly

In a surprise twist, Hachette Magazines blitzed past Straight Arrow Publishers and other rumored bidders to emerge as the buyer for Des Moines-based Meredith Corporation's beleaguered Metropolitan Home. New York-based Hachette says it plans to cut the frequency from 12 times a year to six, commencing with the January/February issue. The rate base will be lowered by 100,000 to 600,000.

Hachette president and CEO David Pecker says that he expects to offer jobs to about 10 to 15 people from the existing staff of 45. However, publisher Steve Burzon and editor Dorothy Kalins are not expected to stay with the title when it moves to Hachette.

Several suitors

Jann Wenner, publisher of Rolling Stone, broke off talks about a possible bid for the title early in November amid widespread speculation that he was simply providing a cover for the title while Meredith worked to find a serious buyer. Cahners was rumored to be interested in the title as a potential fit with its design group, and K-III Magazines was also rumored to be an active bidder. K-III spokesman Greg Miller denies the company was an active bidder. "We may have asked to take a look at it, but we did not actively bid," he says.

But Pecker worked around the clock and was able to present a serious offer Monday, November 2, after three days of feverish number-crunching.

Apartment Life appeared first as a special-interest magazine in 1973, but was rechristened Metropolitan Home in 1981 and, for a while, caught fire with advertisers. But it cooled off abruptly with the late-eighties recession. After dropping nearly 20 percent in ad pages last year, Met Home was down another 9 percent through September this year, to 532 ad pages.

John Avers, chairman and CEO of Avers, Inc., a Grand Rapids, Michigan, ad agency that specializes in upscale furniture accounts, notes that "the number of advertising pages in the whole field declined, and Met Home was getting squeezed." He adds that upscale furniture makers, such as Henredon, had cut ad budgets, and new competition for furnishings ads arose in recent years from other home titles, such as Victoria, Country Life and Country Home. "The country titles all took a little piece of the pie," he says.

Thomas Losee, publishing director of Knapp Communications' Architectural Digest, which has also struggled of late, says that Met Home "had problems with its syndicated research. It's no secret that they were not able to generate many readers per copy."

Pecker says he hopes to counter past shortcomings by grouping the title with the six-times-a-year Elle Decor and 10-times-a-year Home in a three-title buy that will have a two million-circulation rate base. John Miller, publisher of Elle Decor and Home, is expected to take over as publisher of Met Home. A new editor was not named at press time.

"We think the home-furnishings field will come back--maybe not tomorrow--but we're in this for the long haul," Pecker says. Terms were not disclosed, but the deal was expected to be finalized by November 13.