Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 8, 1992 TAG: 9201080109
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 5 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: DEIRDRE CARMODY THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
MAGAZINES WOO LISTENERS
It is the next century. New Age Person walks up to a latter-day newsstand, asks for her favorite magazine and is handed a tape. She pops it into her Walkman, adjusts her earphones and settles in for a good new-fashioned browse.Well, maybe. But that day is hardly around the corner. In fact, the magazine industry is just beginning to look into the possibilities of audio cassettes as marketable spinoffs of existing magazines.
Later this month, People and Newsweek will each come out with audio cassettes based on their magazines.
Buzz, a two-year-old Los Angeles-based magazine that has already produced one audio cassette, is planning another for fall release.
People has teamed up with Dove Audio Inc. to produce "People Plus," an hourlong tape. The first tape will be based on the magazine's "25 Most Intriguing People of 1991" issue.
Michael Viner, president of Dove, said the People tapes would be issued quarterly at first and, if successful, go monthly within the next two years. He said subjects for the tapes would be chosen on the basis of what had "the longest shelf life."
"We are not looking for a major overnight success," he said. "We consider that what we are doing is getting educated on the learning curve. We are looking to find the right product, the right price point, and to develop a high amount of quality for this product."
The tapes will be sold for $5.98 in bookstores, supermarkets and newsstands. He said 25,000 copies would initially be produced.
The audio cassette will resemble a radio program on which experts are interviewed about celebrities.
"I think as it is conceived right now, we might do `Great Romances' or `What Happened with the Royal Family?' " said Jeremy Koch, consumer marketing director of People. "Whatever we do will be true to the franchise and in the spirit of People magazine. It will probably be more theme-oriented, as opposed to fast-breaking popular or cultural news."
Newsweek, on the other hand, will produce a spinoff of a spinoff. In partnership with The Associated Press, it will market cassettes based on a weekly hourlong news program that is broadcast on 120 radio stations.
Subscriptions to the radio cassettes will sold for $29.95 for 10 weeks and $149 for 52 weeks. Newsweek expects to sell 13,000 subscriptions by the end of the year.
David Alpern, a senior editor at Newsweek who is one of the hosts of the Sunday morning program, "Newsweek on Record," said the magazine hoped to sell six minutes of advertising on the tapes. The tapes will include interviews with Newsweek writers and editors, as well as with outside experts, about the week's news.
Buzz, a culture and celebrity magazine, made its first tape as a marketing tool for the magazine, which was started in 1990.
A tape, "The Best of Buzz," was put together from the magazine's first three issues. Most of the selections were writers reading their own pieces, or, as Collinsworth puts it, "a collection of distinct, idiosyncratic voices quite unlike corporate journalism."