American Magazines 2008: The Opening Night - 3D theaters and the Ad Age A-List

Geoffrey Precourt

This is one of a series of edited extracts from the American Magazine Conference 2008. Other articles cover:

For full coverage of the American Magazines Conference 2008, visit our conference blog.

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San Francisco native Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the United States House of Representatives and, for the last two weeks, the most visible woman in the country, kicked off her key-note address at the 2008 American Magazine Conference (AMC) with a simple question: “So, how was your week?”

Back home for the weekend—and, most certainly, bound for a red-eyed return later that same night to Washington, D.C.—she welcomed the 400-plus attendees with an all-out salute to the magazine industry. 

When she first agreed to speak to the gathering—co-sponsored by the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) and American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME)—back in early February, she assumed that discussions about the economy’s effect on advertising would be a topic of interest. “But I had no idea that we would be in the eye of the storm,” she admitted. 

Pelosi was the central figure in the economic-bailout discussions and negotiations that have dominated print, broadcast, and digital news media for two weeks. And the reportage, she commented, offered a sharp contrast to the early days of media when communications and transportation were co-dependent: “The news could travel only as fast as a horse could gallop or a boat could sail.” 

The bailout reportage of the current crisis, by contrast, was a series of perpetual updates, no matter what the media. But Pelosi, who “couldn’t wait for the news” when she was growing up, seemed comfortable with the attention. In fact, she saluted the magazine industry for its diligence and integrity: “Thank you for the information,” she said. “Thank you for the entertainment. Thanks you for the diversion. And thank you for the strengthening of our democracy you all provide.”

3D: coming soon to a theatre near you 

Fortune Managing Editor Andy Serwer, in a second keynote session, followed Rep. Pelosi to the stage of the Westin St. Francis hotel’s Grand Ballroom with an interview with Jeffrey Katzenberg, ceo of DreamWorks Animation SKG. 

Following the lead of the House Speaker, Katzenbeg quickly established his credentials as a print consumer: “I still have a voracious appetite for magazines—all shapes, types, and forms. I may be so old school that I’m no longer a relevant demographic, but I love being able to read the long-form story. This morning, I found myself reading a couple of essays in Time about the economic situation and you just can’t find that kind of writing anywhere else.”

For his slice of media, Katzenberg predicted an imminent shift in technologies that will be every bit as dramatic and powerful as the change from silent films to talkies or the transformation of movies from black-and-white to color:

“Think about the transformation of the way we deliver sound,” he told Serwer. “We started from vinyl records, moved to eight-track cassettes, to tapes, to CDs and now to digital. A new generation of 3D technology is about to make movies—as we know them—the equivalent of vinyl records.”

This “third great revolution,” he added, is only a short handful of months away. “The difference between stereoscopic films and flat movies is the tip of a waterfall that will bring tremendous transformations throughout society. And, it’s not a change that will just affect movies. It quickly will change every form of visual device, whether it’s a home TV or a handheld mobile device.”

And, at Serwer’s prodding, he reassured the AMC audience that viewers will not have to don geeky red-and-blue disposable glasses to take in the new media offerings. Italian eyeglass designer Luxotica already has created a new product that will serve its owners as eyeglasses in the harsh light of day and as 3D viewing glasses in the dark of the theater.

“If you go running, you put on sneakers. When you go bowling, you take your personal bowling balls with you. In much the same fashion, it won’t be long before you have your special sunglasses to take to the movie theater.”

The Ad Age A-List 2008 

For years, Advertising Age has used the occasion of the MPA Annual Meeting to present its “A List” of magazines that manage to match quantitative measures such as advertising pages, total circulation, subscriptions, and single-copy sales with more qualitative considerations such as editorial quality, innovation, and digital friendliness.

For 2008, the top “A List” performer was the North American edition of The Economist. “What’s the mission for a weekly magazine in 2008?” Ad Age asked. “While other newsweeklies make their columnists names bigger, The Economist relies instead on the value of its content. To be fair, it also has spent a few years adding distribution at chains such as Whole Foods. New subscribers pay more than $100 for a year’s worth of issues.”

Rounding out the top 10 were: 

Ad Age also named Chris Johns, National Geographic editor-in-chief (“unassuming and thoughtful in ways most magazine editors are not”) the editor of the year and Elle Publisher Carol A. Smith (“She recognized a lot quicker than a lot of other publishers that magazines are brands,” one large beauty advertiser told Ad Age) executive of the year.

About the author:

   

Geoffrey Precourt is the US Editor of WARC Online.

 

You can read his reports from American Magazines 2008 and other recent marketing events at WARC's conference blogs.