California succumbs to network of city titles

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Sept 1, 1991 by Susan Hovey

When Australian-based Consolidated Press Holdings announced at the end of july that it was shutting down the 15-year-old monthly California after its September issue-along with its upstart city magazines Angeles and SF-many observers attributed the magazine's demise to its attempt to be all things to all people.

Others suggest the fault line runs much deeper.

"Yes, there are cultural differences between Northern and Southern California," says Allan Halcrow, editor of the Costa Mesa-based Personnel Journal and president of the Western Publications Association. "But I don't think there are gaps that can't be overcome. California failed to define the issues that unify the state."

Some big names tried to make a go of California: M Inc, editor Clay Felker, who launched the magazine as New West, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and Texas Monthly publisher Michael Levy. And former publisher Alan Bennett made a last-ditch effort to save it this past june.

According to several observers, SF and Angeles-the slick monthlies launched in the late 1980s for a controlled audience of 85,000 to 90,000-showed promise. One former employee says that for the fiscal year ending in June, Angeles was up 20.5 percent and SF 35 percent in ad revenue. "The August and September issues of Angeles were profitable," the source says.

Notes Los Angeles Times Magazine editor Linda Mathews: Angeles was a good shelter magazine and getting better all the time."

Consolidated launched its city titles to help California compete better with Los Angeles, San Francisco Focus and San Diego, which had formed the California City Group ad network in the mid 1980s and were luring away much of the national advertising that had been California's life-support system. All of the titles have been hit hard by the recession, but over the first four months of 1991, California ran just 187 ad pages, down from 243 a year ago. By comparison, San Diego ran 359 pages, Los Angeles 335, LA Style 284 and Focus 261.

In recent years, fewer and fewer of the magazine's 350,000 subscribers were direct mail sold, according to several observers. (One source familiar with the list put the figure at 41,000.) By some estimates, upwards of 100,000 copies were distributed to members of regional associations, which would pay for the copies but then charge the magazine for using the names. The practice, known as a "check swap," allows the circulation to be counted on an ABC audit. Faulty list? Of the 12 lists that newcomer Bu= tested for its first direct mail campaign last year, magazine officials say the California list of direct-sold names was by far the weakest, pulling a 3.5 percent response, compared with the overall I I percent.

A source close to the company blames declining reader interest-single-copy sales had plunged to 7,929-on Consolidated's attempt to make the title more celebrity oriented. While that approach may sell a lot of magazines in Australia, it doesn't necessarily work in the United States, the source says, adding that California erred by bringing in Australian gossip columnist Neal Travis as editor last August.

And then there was the estimated $400,000 Consolidated would have to pay toward the newly enacted state sales tax on magazines.

All of this was enough for Consolidated owner and media mogul Kerry Packer, said to be the richest man in Australia, to pull the plug two days after spending a reported $1.5 million on his daughter's wedding.

"People like Packer," concludes Los Angeles publisher Geoff Miller, "didn't get deep pockets by taking losses indefinitely."