Inside Move: The final word on Talk: done
Mum's the word at mag
Talk Magazine, the feisty, long-embattled joint venture of Hearst Magazines and Miramax Films, finally fizzled Jan. 18.
The victim of a slumping economy and an identity crisis that dogged the mag from its splashy Ellis Island launch party in 1999 to its February 2002 final issue, Talk burned through close to $55 million -- a burden shared equally by the two partners.
Talk Media chair Tina Brown and president Ron Galotti blame Sept. 11 for derailing the mag's drive toward profitability, despite a 20% rise in circulation and a 25% increase in ad revenue from the year before. This in the face of a magazine industry recession that saw ad revenue decrease 4.9% and ad pages decline 11.7% industrywide.
"9/11 changed everything," Brown and Galotti say. "It made it virtually impossible for a stand-alone title like Talk."
But an industry source says another problem was its newsstand sell-through rate of 20%.
"We entered into this with confidence that the magazine could be profitable in a reasonable time frame, but the prevailing economic climate forced us to readjust our thinking," says Miramax co-chair Harvey Weinstein.
The Talk Miramax book division, which has enjoyed a profitable run with four New York Times bestsellers in its first year, will live. The press is a wholly owned Miramax subsid, so Weinstein will look to upcoming titles by Rudy Giuliani and Madeleine Albright to repay the mag's losses -- but that's a tall order even for a large, highly profitable imprint.
The end of Talk marks the close of a chapter in Miramax history, as its ambitious plans to become a diversified, synergistic media company appear to fade.
While Talk was enjoying its last hurrah -- a sparsely attended Golden Globes party at the Hotel Mondrian on Jan. 17 -- Weinstein was in Park City. He was celebrating his company's renewed commitment to the business it knows best -- the film fest circuit, where Miramax spent $6.5 million for two of the most talked-about movies ("Tadpole" and "Blue Car") at Sundance.
