Last updated: 10:41 am
September 23, 2008
Posted: 4:31 am
September 19, 2008
BAUER Publishing, parent company of struggling celebrity magazine Life & Style, is now said to be scouring Fleet Street in London for a new editor-in-chief.
Sources say the incumbent editor, Debbie Armstrong, who joined the weekly only in June, is planning to return to her native Australia at year's end following the birth of a new baby.
It will mark the advent of the sixth editor in the magazine's four-year history.
The first was launch editor Sheryl Berk, now an author; then Debra Birnbaum, who's now running TV Guide; Mark Pasetsky, now a consultant; In Style Editor-in-Chief Richard Spencer, who for six months did double duty on both magazines; and then Armstrong.
The search comes as Life & Style's newsstand sales continue to lag. According to sources, its latest cover, featuring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, sold just 340,000 copies.
Street shock
Even before this week's shocking turn of events on Wall Street, magazine publishers were expecting 2009 to be one of the toughest years on record.
Perhaps the only bright spot is that the three big companies leading this week's collapse - Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and American International Group - didn't do much advertising in magazines.
Total advertising in all media last year from the battered trio was $157 million, according to TNS Media Intelligence. In the first half of this year, they spent about $75 million.
It sounds impressive until one calculates that the latest Microsoft campaign is budgeted at $300 million.
Lehman, which filed for bankruptcy earlier this week and has already had units sold to Barclays Plc, seemed to be nearly absent from most conventional advertising, according to TNS.
Total ad spending in radio, newspapers and magazines was a scant $501,000 for the first half of 2008, and the firm didn't spend a penny on TV or display Internet advertising.
In all of 2007, Lehman spent $1.2 million, down from $2.6 million the year before.
Meanwhile, AIG, which is being taken over by Uncle Sam, was a comparatively big spender, ponying up $53.1 million for TV ads, up from $36.6 million in the first half of last year, TNS data show. Magazine ad spending in the first half fell to $5.8 million from $6.1 million a year ago.
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