• by Larry Dobrow , July 3, 2003

When Movieline's May/June issue hit newsstands earlier this year, readers and advertisers probably noticed one or two small differences. The title had swelled into an oversize format. It had significantly upgraded its paper stock. And oh yeah - it no longer had a whole lot to do with movies.

Quietly, the magazine had reinvented itself as Movieline's Hollywood Life (MHL), a publication boasting more in common with InStyle or Vanity Fair than with Premiere or any other film-first fanzine. Granted, Movieline had been moving in that direction for the last year or two - the fashion spreads and ads for chi-chi jewelers and hotels were a tip-off - but it wasn't until the May/June issue that the metamorphosis was complete.

"Let's face it - consumers and advertisers can't get enough of the Hollywood lifestyle," quips MHL group publisher Audrey Arnold.

Arnold says the seeds for the changes were planted in the wake of research conducted by Movieline several years ago. After studying the magazine's readers and advertisers, she began to question whether a movie-only publication could survive in the Internet era. "There's so many other ways to get information," she explains. "What we learned is that to be a monthly movie magazine is extremely limiting and actually not that relevant."

With this in mind, the publication started subtly tweaking its editorial mix. Fashion layouts became a permanent fixture; the magazine's interviews and features began to shift away from their film-intensive focus. Gradually, the "Hollywood lifestyle" concept took root. "Before too long, it became obvious that the contents of the magazine didn't match its name," Arnold explains.

This, she suggests, is the reason for the publication's flagging fortunes over the past year or two. Indeed, MHL's most recent Publisher's Information Bureau numbers are borderline ugly. From January to May, the magazine plummeted nearly 46% in ad pages (to 50 from 91.8) and 48% in ad revenue (to $1.2 million from $2.3 million) against the same period in 2002.

Not surprisingly, Arnold attributes these declines to a handful of factors having to do with the name change and repositioning. "We purposely lowered our circulation from 300,000 to 250,000 in anticipation of the changes," she notes. Similarly, comparisons to the year-ago period were skewed by the magazine combining its May and June issues in 2003; Arnold says MHL will have published nine times before the year is out.

The ad page and revenue drops might also be attributable to advertisers not knowing exactly what to make of the magazine. "We were a lifestyle magazine called Movieline" is how Arnold neatly summarizes the problem. With the new format and title in place, however, she claims that marketers have done an about-face.

"The name Hollywood Life makes the magazine so appropriate for so many [ad] categories," she enthuses. "When we call on senior media directors, they say, 'I can clearly see the positioning of this book. There's nothing like it out there.' We're bigger than the other upscale books like Gotham and we're audited. We're an established player reaching the right people. And it's an affordable buy."

Not surprisingly Arnold has set her sights on the luxury goods category, especially high-end jewelry and watch manufacturers. Advertisers that have already come on board include W Hotels, Novartis (for its day/night contact lenses) and Estée Lauder, which debuts in the September issue of MHL. Arnold's wish list includes the usual suspects: automotive, fashion and fragrance advertisers. "Georgio Armani and Chanel would be great fits with what we're doing," she says hopefully.

Looking ahead, MHL plans to drop "Movieline" from its moniker within a few months. As for readers and advertisers, Arnold is predictably confident that they will embrace the revamped publication.

"If you build a good product, they will come," she says. "The real challenge is getting the people who say, 'I love the book, it looks great,' to back it up with action. Turning those compliments into insertion orders - that's our job right now."