Family man

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Sept 1, 1995 by Chris Beam

Imagine: You launch two magazines that spawn a new category. Giant publishing companies notice, and start scrambling for ownership. You watch circulation and ad figures skyrocket, and soon become president of magazine publishing at the Walt Disney Company and president of a joint venture between Disney and Ziff-Davis. Imagine making all this from nothing--all within five years.

Just the pipe dream of a magazine entrepreneur? No, it's the real-life story of Jake Winebaum, creator of the wildly successful FamilyFun and FamilyPC magazines, which are the first of their kind to market pure, unadulterated fun to parents and their kids between the ages of three and 15. According to Winebaum, the reason for his success is not that complicated: "The key is to define an idea in its simplest possible form, make sure everyone buys into it--and keep them focused."

And keep them focused he has--so much so that Winebaum has been able to oversee the editorial teams for both magazines, develop their skills and vision to match his own, and then direct his attention elsewhere. He is looking in three directions: to his new post, announced in April, as president of magazine publishing at Disney; to his current position as president of the joint venture between Disney and Ziff; and to his responsibilities as the leader of a group looking at Disney's online strategies. Winebaum says he'll retain his presidency of FamilyFun and FamilyPC, but will remain outside the day-to-day operations. And he's confident that the staff he's hired will only make the magazines better. "He's the kind of person we all want to make happy; I don't know anyone who doesn't want what Jake wants," says Dan Muse, who became editor of FamilyPC in May. "It [FamilyPC] has a pretty simple mission, and Jake's always had a clear vision of where he wanted it to go."

Winebaum launched FamilyPC in September of last year as a Disney/Ziff-Davis joint venture, and as a logical extension of an already existing family-computing section of FamilyFun, originally launched with the help of U.S. News & World Report in May 1991. Like FamilyFun, with its simple yet original mission to provide families with fun things to do together, FamilyPC's purpose is clear--to help parents get the most out of their family computing time and navigate the maze of kids' computer products.

"The promise of computers has always been a more productive use of a family's time. But the problem is, it's just a box until you know what to do with it," Winebaum says. "We chose a very defined, focused niche in the market, and so far it has proven to be the absolute epicenter."

According to Winebaum, FamilyPC, with sales consistently between 125,000 and 130,000, has outsold any of the other computer books on the newsstand. And it was able to kick off its first issue with a record 130 ad pages. Winebaum says FamilyPC will be audited in the first half of 1995; the ABC sworn statement for the second half of 1994 showed an average monthly circulation of 239,000. And, unlike any other computer magazine, FamilyPC engages a high percentage of women readers--nearly 50 percent, according to Winebaum.

Ellen Pearlman, editor in chief of FamilyPC's closest competitor, Manhasset, New York-based CMP Publications' HomePC, says that people won't read more than one computing magazine, and that it's important to have a broader scope. "There are a lot of different activities you do at home with your computer--online, home business, home finances, kids--we add it all up in one publication," Pearlman says. HomePC's circulation, now 400,000, has nearly doubled since its launch in June 1994--just three months ahead of FamilyPC. Pearlman says she knew about FamilyPC before it came out, but that "they didn't alter our philosophy--and you always experience competition in a good market."

Winebaum says that he launched FamilyPC during a boom, whereas FamilyFun launched during a recession. But even in a recession, FamilyFun inspired competition and proved successful from the beginning. Its circulation has grown from 200,000 in 1991 to an audited 610,043 in 1994. Its rate-base jumped to 700,000 with the August issue, even though the original plan was to increase circulation by only 100,000 each year. The growth continued despite a subscription price increase from the original $9.95 to $14.95 at the beginning of last year. Ad pages have also risen dramatically, going from 273 in 1992 to 771 in 1994, and ad revenues have grown 48.7 percent, to $8.2 million, in the first five months of this year, compared to the same period last year. Ad rates have increased too, from $5,670 for a full-page, black-and-white ad in 1992 to $23,048 today.

Winebaum didn't do it alone. After putting out only two issues, he had six publishers interested in partnering with him, including Time Warner, Hearst, Cahners, Meredith and Disney. To launch the first issue, Winebaum relied on "soft support" from U.S. News, where he was the senior vice president of marketing and therefore able to utilize some of the business staff for sales, circulation, distribution, prepress and production, and to print the first issue under the company contract. In the end Disney--the most inexperienced of the lot--won out, acquiring the magazine in 1992. "Jake was not desperate," says John Skipper, former president of magazine publishing at Disney and now vice president of all Disney publishing. "He had a crystal-clear concept about fun, entertainment, quality and family. These are the qualities of Disney."