Re-'Vibe': 'Uptown' Buys Defunct Title

Vibe mag cover June/July 09The reports of Vibe's demise were not exaggerated, but the hip-hop music magazine has returned with remarkable speed. The briefly defunct title has been purchased by Uptown Media Group -- publisher of Uptown, a luxury glossy -- with funding from its owner InterMedia Partners, a private equity firm, and Blackrock Digital.

The three partners, led by former owners and sales executives from the magazine, plan to relaunch both the print product and the Web site in the not-too-distant future.

Bowing to the trend toward digital distribution and consumption, Uptown and its partners said the magazine's Web site will be the "centerpiece of the new venture." Along with the Web site, they will also focus on building out Vibe's online Lifestyle Network, which brings together a number of sites targeting the young urban male demo.

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They also plan to publish the print product -- a monthly in its previous incarnation -- as a quarterly magazine, set to debut this fall with a November-December issue. The quarterly will have a guaranteed circulation of 300,000, compared to 600,000 for the defunct version.

Vibe was closed at the beginning of July, following a 42% drop in ad pages in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same period last year, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. Those losses follow several previous years of declines.

Per PIB, Vibe's ad pages declined 3.3% in 2006, 19.9% in 2007 and 17.7% in 2008. That means total ad pages fell from 1,242 in 2005 to 792 in 2008, for an overall 36% drop. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Vibe's newsstand sales fell 11% from 112,407 in the second half of 2007 to 100,318 in the second half of 2008.

The timing could not have been worse for the Wicks Group of Companies, which acquired Vibe in 2006. The Wicks Group jettisoned Vibe Vixen, a sister publication with a rate base of 425,000, in September 2007. In February of this year, it cut Vibe's circulation 25%, reduced its frequency from 12 to 10 issues a year, and slashed salaries 10% to 15% -- all to no avail.

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