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Seventeen is the latest publication to be impacted by Hearst’s new “digital-first” strategy. The magazine had already been cut from a monthly to six print issues per year. It will now publish an unspecified number of issues per year, “pegged to news events and key moments in readers’ lives.” The only confirmed issue for 2019 is one centered around prom season. “Our focus will be on the brand’s two-plus million unique visitors and more than 12 million followers across social media,” a Hearst spokeswoman told WWD. Seventeen has seen its readership fall significantly across most channels. Print and web readership are down 15 percent and 23 percent year-to-date according to figures from the MPA. While its mobile web viewership is up 10 percent, video viewership, which is on the rise at many publications, is down 42 percent.
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Art Media Holdings, the owner of ARTnews, Art in America, ANTIQUES and MODERN Magazine, has been acquired by Penske Media Corporation. Penske’s stable of print and digital properties already includes Rolling Stone, Variety, WWD, Deadline and IndieWire. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. A statement from Penske says that the acquisition of the Art Media Holdings titles will open up opportunities for the company to create a data and analytics business and a B2B events business as well as augmenting its digital strategy. ARTnews has been published since 1902, and Art in America was founded in 1913. With the addition of the new brands, Penske says it will become the largest employer of art journalists in the world.
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The biggest winner in the midterm elections was the advertising industry. Kantar Media reports that $5.25 billion was spent on political ads during the recent election cycle, an increase of 78 percent over the 2014 midterms, and a jump of 20 percent over the amount spent on the 2016 presidential election. Local broadcast TV took in $3.1 billion and local cable accounted for $1.2 billion of the total. Digital ads came in third at $950 million, but that figure represents a 46 percent jump from 2016 and is almost four times as much as 2014’s $250 million. Democrats spent a little more than Republicans (53 percent vs. 46 percent). Healthcare was the big focus of Democrat-funded advertising, while tax reform, immigration and record levels of employment dominated on the Republican side.
WNET, the nation’s largest public media company, names Edward O’Keefe its next president and CEO, effective September 21. O’Keefe succeeds Neal Shapiro, who becomes president emeritus and will retire at the end of the year... The Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, which would empower news publishers and other content providers to defend themselves by mandating transparency for all bots crawling their sites, in introduced in the House by Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL) and Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-NC)... Google gets socked by European Union regulators with a $1 billion fine for using the platform’s dominance as a search engine to illegally undercut competition.
Boston Globe Media acquires InstaTrac, a company that provides subscription-based services aimed at making government information easier to find, track, and understand... AARP names former New Republic CEO and publisher Michael Caruso as its SVP and chief content officer, unifying the organization's portfolio of media, live events and digital platforms... The Fund for American Studies, an educational nonprofit, awards its inaugural Journalism Excellence Fellowships.
Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. has replaced CEO and former California Congressman Devin Nunes with Kevin McGurn, a seasoned media sales executive.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is being bought by the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, a nonprofit that is the parent organization of the Baltimore Banner... The British Broadcasting Corporation is axing approximately 2,000 jobs, about 10 percent of its work force... Snap, the company behind Snapchat, is also succumbing to layoff fever, announcing plans to lay off 16 percent of its employees, about 1,000 people.
CBS News Radio will go off the air on May 22, part of the axe-swinging managerial plan put into play by CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss... The Economist, which was first published in 1843, is changing hands. Canadian billionaire Stephen Smith has agreed to acquire a 26.9 percent stake in the publication from Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, her family and family foundation... Nexstar Media Group says it has closed its acquisition of TEGNA, the broadcast, digital media and marketing services company that was formed in 2015, when the Gannett Company split into two publicly traded companies.
