Hollywood magazine merger could bring Sinay 'boffo' results.

Hollywood magazine merger could bring Sinay `boffo' results

American Film magazine and Hollywood Reporter magazine will merge into a redesigned publication in April as part of a strategy aimed at turning American Film profitable, the publisher of Los Angeles-based American Film said last week.

Publisher Hershel D. Sinay said the new monthly magazine will be named American Film but will be sent to current subscribers of Hollywood Reporter magazine in addition to American Film subscribers.

The merging of the magazines will be one of the first major reorganizational efforts since Billboard Publications Inc., a New York-based publisher of entertainment industry magazines, bought American Film and the Hollywood Reporter earlier this year.

Billboard's move is an effort to make a profitable publication out of American Film magazine, which previously has not made money. Billboard hired Sinay, a veteran Los Angeles publisher, as part of its strategy to turn the magazine profitable by the end of 1989.

Sinay said the merger of the two monthly magazines was a logical move because both publish articles about the film industry. Hollywood Reporter magazine is a separate publication produced monthly by the Hollywood Reporter, a daily trade publication covering entertainment industry news. The Reporter will continue to publish its daily edition separately after the two magazines merge, Sinay said.

The new American Film publisher said his strategy for turning a profit is to concentrate on courting advertisers who want to reach the publication's upscale subscribers.

The typical American Film subscriber is about 35 years old, single and well-educated, with an income of $45,000, Sinay said, and the readership is pretty evenly divided between men and women.

When the two magazines are merged, he said, the number of subscribers will be 130,000. About 118,000 of these will be existing American Film subscribers and the remaining 12,000 from Hollywood Reporter.

The Reporter has about 23,000 subscribers, Sinay said, but a "merging and purging" of the two magazines' subscription lists will eliminate about 13,000 duplicate subscribers. The subscribers include about 110,000 "serious filmgoers" and about 20,000 executives who represent "the leadership of the film industry," he said.

Sinay said the number and type of subscribers should make the magazine a paying proposition if it is redesigned and a proper advertising sales effort mounted. Companies like Chanel and a leading Rolls Royce dealer already have signed long-term advertising contracts with the magazine, he said.

Sinay's plan also includes a new editorial and production staff at the magazine and the hiring of Randy Russell, advertising director at Hollywood Reporter magazine, as national consumer advertising director at American Film.

The new staff includes Chris Hodenfield, editor; James Greenberg, senior editor; Randy Tierney, managing editor; and Daniel Valdez, production director.

Hodenfield is a former Rolling Stone magazine writer and editor who also worked as editor of the Style section of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. Greenberg formerly was West Coast editor of American Film and also worked for Daily Variety, the entertainment trade publication based in Los Angeles. Tierney was an editor at Santa Barbara magazine and Valdez was production director at Ranch & Coast, a San Diego magazine where Sinay was publisher before joining American Film.

Taking over at American Film marked a return to Los Angeles for Sinay, who said he was happy as publisher at Ranch & Coast, a glossy magazine aimed at the affluent in Southern California.

But Billboard "made me an offer I couldn't refuse," said Sinay, who formerly worked in Los Angeles as publisher of California Business magazine and as a vice president at East/West Network, a publisher of airline in-flight magazines.

Sinay said the financial backing available from Billboard was one reason he was attracted to the publisher's job.

He said Billboard Publications Inc. is the country's largest publisher of entertainment industry magazines and is owned by Boston-based Affiliated Publications, publishers of the Boston Globe. According to a survey by the trade publication Advertising Age, Affiliated is the 31st-largest media company in the United States with annual revenues of $487 million.

American Film formerly was based in New York but the new owners moved it to Los Angeles, at offices near the Hollywood Reporter on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

The magazine formerly was published for the New York-based American Film Institute by M.D. Publishing of New York. The American Film Institute is a non-profit organization that conducts film industry-related classes at a location near Sunset Boulevard and Western Avenue, Sinay said.

Subscribers to American Film magazine automatically become members of the American Film Institute, Sinay said, an arrangement he will continue because "We don't want to lose what we already have" in type and number of subscribers.