'Advertising Age' Talks to Condé Nast CEO About 'Gourmet' Shutdown
From Advertising Age's Q&A with Charles H. Townsend, president and CEO of Gourmet publisher Condé Nast:
Advertising Age: A Condé Nast employee asked me today whether choosing Gourmet over Bon Appétit signals the future of Condé Nast. Do you shut down the title that's beautiful and smart with good writing, the employee asked, and go for the title with recipes and pictures of cheeseburgers? Do you go with mass over the esteemed, narrower title?
Mr. Townsend: That's not Condé Nast. I think that Bon Appétit certainly has broader appeal but I would by no means characterize it as a mass magazine. It's still a high-end magazine. You look at its demography, its price points, the advertising it carries, you look at everything about it, it's a Conde Nast magazine.
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4 Comments:
"Do you shut down the title that's beautiful and smart with good writing, the employee asked, and go for the title with recipes and pictures of cheeseburgers?"
Hmmm. If you look at the next most recent entry on today's Serious Eats, you'll find a picture of cheeseburger.
bcarter3 at 12:07PM on 10/06/09
@bcarter3: Yes, the irony was not lost on me. Although I'm not sure if that's a fair comparison. Sure, BA is a little more mass-market than Gourmet, but hasn't Gourmet done something on burgers before? I don't know. I'd have to look in our library here of old Gourmet issues.
Adam Kuban at 12:10PM on 10/06/09
condé nast is missing the point. they just killed off their crown jewel of food magazines because of some ridiculous numbers game. i find it telling that they are keeping the "Gourmet" name for their online properties and also for future books — they know it's worth more than some stupid subscription numbers, but they won't admit it openly. just a few weeks ago i had renewed my subscription to Gourmet for 3 years. if they try to convert my subscription to one for Bon Appetit, i'm going to cancel, and they will certainly get a letter explaining why.
franko at 3:12PM on 10/06/09
They should have 86ed editor-in-chief Reichl, brought in someone with an actual sense of taste that was more impotant than her sense of entitlement and self-importance, and possibly have saved what was once one of the finest magazines published in America.
Sommelier at 8:45PM on 10/06/09