Hachette buys Wenner's Family Life

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, April 1, 1995

Wenner Media, which has dangled Family Life in front of the publishing world for several months, has found a buyer in Hachette Filipacchi Magazines. (The purchase price could not be determined.) Lazard Freres & Co., which last October brokered Forstmann Little & Co.'s $1.4 billion acquisition of Ziff-Davis Publishing, is handling the sale for Wenner.

The acquisition will give Hachette an upscale parenting book that on first glance doesn't appear to fit snugly with its other titles. But the New York City-based company's presence in the automotive (Car and Driver, Road & Track), consumer electronics (Stereo Review, Audio) and shelter (Home, Met Home, Elle Decor) categories may help Family Life nab more ad pages. The title, launched in August 1993, has an ABC-audited circulation of 240,000.

Hachette has been more active than usual so far this year. Just days after the Family Life purchase, the company acquired Reese Communications, publisher of the 300,000-circulation Video. (The deal also includes Video's Buyer's Guide Series, which publishes six issues a year.) Hachette is also backing John F. Kennedy Jr.'s political magazine, George.

For Wenner, meanwhile, the sale of Family Life comes amid the highly publicized split between Jann Wenner and his wife, Jane, who owns 49 percent of the company. At this point, few observers expect a break-up of Wenner Media itself. And none of the other Wenner books are currently on the block, says a source. Nonetheless, the development has set the media industry abuzz with speculation as to Jane Wenner's next move.

The mainstream press spent weeks hemming and hawing over how to address the Wenner story because Jann Wenner is now keeping company with 28-year-old ex-model and current Calvin Klein designer Matt Nye. Many editors acknowledge that if Wenner had left his wife for another woman, the news--and its potential impact on the company--would have been reported much sooner.

"This story combines two confused hot-button issues," says New York editor Kurt Andersen, whose own publication weighed in with a six-page feature in its March 13 issue detailing the personal aspects of the break-up. "There's the issue of delving into people's personal lives and what we as a media elite and society think of gayness as a lifestyle option."