City mags battle for L.A.

Buzz and Los Angeles fight for their lives

WEST L.A. - When Allan Mayer quit his job as editor of Buzz magazine on Oct. 16, it must have been a deja vu experience for Marilyn Bethany.

Almost exactly one year earlier, Bethany had been serving as executive editor at Buzz's rival publication, Los Angeles magazine, when editor Robert Sam Anson was fired. Bethany got his job on an interim basis, and then moved over to Buzz a couple of months later.

Once again, Bethany has been asked to step in - only this time, permanently. She was officially named editor of Buzz late last month.

Bethany has now found herself at the editorial helm of two city magazines that are both deeply competitive and deeply in transition. Los Angeles and Buzz eye each other across the scant few blocks that separate their West L.A. offices, each seeking ways to steal readership from the other.

The struggle could prove critical, because many industry sources doubt whether both magazines still will be around a few years from now.

The Los Angeles area has not been kind to city magazines. Titles like New West, LA Style and California have winked in and out of existence in the last decade.

In fact, Los Angeles is believed to be the only city magazine that has ever turned a profit here; Buzz has been losing money since its launch in 1990, according to published reports and interviews with industry sources.

Meanwhile, circulation at Los Angeles magazine has been dropping for the past six years, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation.

"I think Los Angeles is a very bad journalism town," said Lew Harris, former editor of Los Angeles magazine who left in 1995 to make way for the tumultuous five-month reign by Anson. "It has never supported two city magazines."

In the struggle to build circulation, Buzz appears to have the momentum. In fact, a sort of see-saw effect has taken place in the the '90s, with Los Angeles magazine's circulation base steadily eroding while Buzz picking up the slack.

From a high of 172,000 readers in 1990, Los Angeles magazine's circulation had fallen to 155,265 by 1994, and by June of this year, it had dropped to 140,061, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation.

The drop is particularly serious because the magazine's "rate base," meaning the number of readers it guarantees its advertisers, is 155,000. The fact that its actual circulation is 9.6 percent less means the magazine is forced to give rebates to its advertisers.

Buzz, meanwhile, reported a circulation of 74,687 in June 1994, 83,531 in June 1995 and 113,034 in June 1996, according to the Audit Bureau. A spokeswoman for parent company Buzz Enterprises said advertising revenues at the magazine are up 31 percent year-to-date over last year.

Buzz is considered to be gaining ground because of its edgy, cosmopolitan focus. Los Angeles traditionally has been criticized for its service-oriented, restaurant-guide journalism, while Buzz immediately worked to distinguish itself by hiring nationally known writers and photographers.

And Buzz is more popular outside of Southern California than its Westside rival: 14.7 percent of Buzz readers live in New York state, while 34 percent live outside California, according to the Audit Bureau. Only 8.6 percent of Los Angeles magazine's readers live outside California.

That means Buzz has a chance to draw more national advertising than Los Angeles, whose advertisers tend to be local firms. Magazines typically seek national advertisers not only because they pay better, but because they lend a more sophisticated look to the publication.

But despite the progress at Buzz, there are signs that all is not well there. Nearly 22 percent of its subscription base consists of bulk subscriptions for hotels and airlines, which pay a discounted rate of only $7.50 a year for the publication, half the regular rate of $14.95.

And recent management turmoil, capped off with the resignation of Mayer as editor, suggests that trouble may be brewing with the magazine's main financial backer.

"If Buzz had a management that really understood the publishing business in a sophisticated way, there's no question it could win this battle (against Los Angeles magazine)," Mayer said. "But unfortunately, the people running that company don't know what they're doing, and that's why I left."

Buzz was launched six years ago by Mayer, former publisher Susan Gates and company President and CEO Eden Collinsworth. Needing a cash infusion to keep the fledgling magazine afloat, the three partners turned to Thai media magnate Sondhi Limthongkul, who is believed to have invested more than $13 million in the publication and is now the company's majority owner.

Last year, Sondhi hired public relations consultant Ned Kennan, a partner in Washington D.C.-based consulting group Quo Vadis, to essentially take control of the magazine, according to various sources.

Gates resigned in April, but publishing reports and sources close to Buzz say she actually was fired by Kennan after she refused to accept his vision for the future of the company.

Kennan and Collinsworth did not return calls from the Business Journal, and Gates could not be reached for comment.

According to sources, Sondhi has told upper management at Buzz that the gravy train has come to an end. Mayer declined to elaborate on the masons for his departure, but said that if the magazine is not profitable by next year, he doubts its financial backer will continue to support it.

"I don't think both magazines will still be around a year from now," Mayer said. "And if I had to predict, I'd say the survivor will be Los Angeles magazine - because Disney's pockets are a lot deeper than Buzz's."

Walt Disney Co. took ownership of Los Angeles magazine this February when it acquired Capital Cities/ABC Inc., the magazine's previous owner. Speculation was rife last fall that Disney would sell the magazine soon after closing the deal for ABC, but there is now near unanimous agreement in publishing industry sources that Disney intends to keep the magazine.

"I don't believe Disney wants to sell, and I've had lunch with Michael Eisner himself," said Michael Caruso, the 35-year-old editor who took over Los Angeles magazine in January. "I think they're really interested in this magazine, because they're really interested in the city. They're heavily invested in Los Angeles."

Caruso was brought in to replace Anson, whose unflattering portrayals of Disney Chairman and CEO Eisner were believed to have played a role in his dismissal. (Anson's first issue of Los Angeles magazine contained an interview in which music mogul David Geffen called Eisner "a liar," and Anson wrote a book on Disney containing less than complimentary comments on its chairman.)

Sources inside Los Angeles magazine, though, say it was Anson's abrasive personality and inability to make the transition from writer to editor that led to his firing.

A former editor at Vanity Fair and the Village Voice, Caruso said his assignment is to turn Los Angeles magazine into "a West Coast Vanity Fair." He has brought in contributors such as John Updike and photographer Herb Ritts.

As a result, circulation is on the upswing at Los Angeles, Caruso claims, specifying that newsstand sales were up 44 percent in the third quarter. He estimated that the magazine would meet its rate base of 155,000 subscribers by December. More national advertisers, such as Ralph Lauren and Visa, have also signed up since Caruso's arrival.

As for Buzz, Caruso said he doesn't really regard it as a threat.

"There is zero competition out here," Caruso said. "There has not been one time that a story has come up and we've been concerned that either Buzz or the L.A. Times Magazine would get it first. Editorially, I think they're both sort of adrift."