CurtCo shuffles entertainment unit

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, June 1, 1997 by Tony Case

* Malibu, California-based CurtCo Freedom Group is folding one title and launching another as part of a major reorganization of its entertainment group. This summer, the one-year-old consumer electronics magazine Audio/Video Shopper will be folded into Home Theater's quarterly buyer's guide. "When you see that a magazine isn't working out, you do the best you can to make it work. But we realized the right business decision would be to concentrate on the properties that were working," says executive vice president Bill Holiber. At the same time, Home Theater is introducing a monthly supplement, Custom Home Theater and Automation.

Also this summer, CurtCo. will scale back its monthly home technology guide Entertainment@Home, to bimonthly. And in November, the company plans to launch Co., a 100,000-circulation magazine focusing on computing and communication technologies for owners and operators of "rowing businesses."