Lang adjusts to life without Sassy

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Feb 1, 1995 by Lorraine Calvacca

Sassy and Dirt are out of the house. Company chairman Dale Lang has two new pet projects to occupy his time. Life goes on at Lang Communications.

The New York City-based publisher would probably prefer to forget 1994. The psychological strain from so much speculation was considerable. There was the supposed white knight from abroad who would supply a much-needed cash infusion for the struggling Sassy. There was the deal with ESPN2 that would save brother Dirt. There was the angst among staffers and unpaid freelancers.

Now, Sassy has a new home after its November sale to Petersen Publishing in Los Angeles; Dirt is officially dead after one issue with ESPN2 (it appeared seven times prior as a test supplement); and Lang is busy focusing on new ventures and its remaining magazines: Working Woman, Working Mother, Ms. and Success, the latter having just posted its best year ever, according to the company.

This month, Lang launches MediZine, a quarterly series of point-of-purchase medication reference guides given free to consumers who purchase prescription or over-the-counter drugs. The company is distributing two million copies of the 72-to 84-page guides to more than 6,500 drug stores, including Genovese, CVS and Walgreens. The stores are contracted to promote the digest-size title and its sponsors with shelf-talkers, window banners and PA announcements.

The first guide, which targets women, contains 10 ads from marketers such as Smith-Kline and Schering-Plough. Future editions will target diabetics, geriatric patients and children. Like the other Lang properties, MediZine is a separate corporation; six individual outside investors hold a minority share.

In December, Lang became a minority investor in Revere Holding Corporation, parent company of Orange County, California-based MallMedia Network and Baltimore-based Revere National, an outdoor advertising company. (Merrill Lynch Capital Partners is the majority holder.) MallMedia seems especially well suited to tie-ins with Working Woman and Working Mother, the two Lang titles that need the most attention.

"I have a lot of experience in [the outdoor] business," says Dale Lang, referring to his days as vice president at 3M, where he oversaw outdoor advertising and mall media. "It's sleeper business. And with postal rates rising and newsstand space shrinking, the answer to publishing today is unique distribution."

Both Working Woman and Working Mother have suffered steady ad declines. The former has dropped 450 pages since 1990, finishing last year at 553; the latter fell from 753 to 679 over that span. But there are signs that things are beginning to improve, with both books claiming gains for the first two months of '95. And Lang staffers are clearly pleased to be out from under the Sassy shadow. Says group publisher Carol Taber: "The sale will affect us positively in that there will be more time for the other books."

Unsettling situation

Former Sassy staffers describe the past year as agonizing. While Lang was searching for a savior, ad pages for the six-year-old title dropped from 505 in 1993 to 407 through November 1994. And freelance writers, photographers and artists went unpaid for as long as four months, according to ex-employees.

Lang claims the company has fulfilled its legal financial obligation in paying its secured creditors--printer R.R. Donnelley and two banks--with the money from the sale (between $3 million and $5 million, according to sources close to the deal). Donnelley executives won't comment. But another vendor, Commack, New York-based Spectragraphics, says Lang still owes it money. "We are considering litigation," says Paul Sibener, an attorney retained by the prepress house. "We feel there are grounds."

Lang attributes the decline of Sassy to a recession economy and competition with "deep-pocket publishers" for shrinking ad dollars and space on the newsstand. Money troubles had dogged the title since Lang acquired it from Australia's Matilda Publications in 1989, inheriting nearly $20 million in debt.

But others blame an eroded editorial vision. "Sassy may have been too aggressive in projections of who it could reach," says Victoria Lasdon Rose, publisher of Gruner Jahr's YM. "In pursuit of tens of millions of readers, it diluted its message and lost a loyal franchise."

At the same time, Lang's prolonged search for investors alienated advertisers. "To say you are going to get investors is great if it happens quickly," says Valerie Muller, executive vice president/media director of DeWitt Media in New York City. "[But the Lang] announcement felt more protective than active. That's what makes advertisers nervous."