They say things happen in threes, and February has claimed the life of the inevitable third magazine. On the heels of Budget Living and Absolute, V Life (a pub you may have heard a lot about, but probably never read) will be shelved this month, after its Oscar issue release.
The mag, a lifestyle spin-off of Variety, launched in 2003 and offered insight into the spending, shopping, and luxury lives of "entertainment's elite." (We just can't imagine that spending a day at the spa with Scarlett Johansson wouldn't attract a whopping number of readers?)
Despite this painful axing, Variety is not giving up on its fashion coverage. The mag plans to throw a new style page into its weekend section, and of course, the website will launch a blog. So, have no fear, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen fans still have a shot at following a day in their life of Starbucks/Urban-Outfitter sprees.
VARIETY SHOW [Sara James, WWD]
Thankfully, Variety inserted all the "flair" necessary with this flaming headline.
Little ratings flair for ABC News pair [Michael Learmonth, Variety]
• Vogue's Anna Wintour is claiming responsibility for the death of Variety spin off V Life. When the "trade" publication put Gwyneth Paltrow on its cover at the same time she popped up on Vogue, the edtrix made more than one angry phone call over the actress' saturation. So when the title announced February would be it's last issue, Wintour's ego celebrated. [Radar]
• Tony Danza's daytime chat fest has been signed for the 2006-07 season, but WABC is dropping his obnoxious tone for another: Rachel Ray. [NYP]
• Teen People killed its story of Olsen twin look-a-like white supremecists Lamb and Lynx Gaede after a "junior employee" signed a deal not to use the words "Nazi," supremacist" and "hate" in the copy. [NYP]
• Katie Couric isn't the only one worried about rising babes in network news. Jill Rappaport is reportedly exiting, to be replaced by Matt Lauer's ex-squeeze and video game vixen Maria Menounos. [Page Six]
• In shocking news, magazine editors will be spending their Thanksgivings .. eating .. with family! [WWD]
• Jann Wenner's gift to his staffers: A chance to see U2 for $369. Too bad Jann is friends with the band and could just have easily scored free tix if he actually meant well this holiday. [R&M]
• Nick Denton threatens to shutter a blog — and the blogosphere cries. [Blog Herald]
• Judith Miller will be able to buy friends with her $3 million severance package, but she needn't spend a penny to get some loving from the Observer. [NYO]
• Just like Hachette Filipacchi, Playboy is taking its magazine digital. Teaming up with Zinio, the first digital issue will debut in October, which means you can take the mag's naughty photos – and articles – on your morning commute without strangers' sneers.
• Vibe founder and famed record producer Quincy Jones is trying to take back control of the magazine with a $100 million joint offer with a hedge fund to owner Freeman Spogli & Co.
• Variety is lowering the standards of its two-year-old V Life, just recast as a monthly from a bimonthly, and offering it to the regular civilian. It'll start showing up on newsstands in September instead of being the exclusive title only distributed to Variety's industry subscribers.
• Rupert Murdoch received an $18.9 million cash bonus from News Corp. the past fiscal year, up more than 50 percent, though it can go up as high as $25 million based on earnings.
• More Men's Vogue coverage means more Jossip vomit, but at least we're cleaning it up with glossy pages.
• Even though Selena Roberts' sports writing at the New York Times is being praised by her editors, the newspaper's Sunday book review slammed her latest effort A Necessary Spectacle on the same day an excerpt of it ran in the Sports section.
• As the New York Times embarks on buildings its own 52-story glass skyscraper, let's not forget about those other media companies who constructed buildings as big as their egos.
• Mark Cuban is steaming (well okay, just perplexed) over the New York Times article that appeared over the weekend claiming he was angry over the low price fetched for Register.com, of which he's an investor. Cuban wasn't aware he was mad about anything.
• ABC and Touchstone are facing a lawsuit from a one Anthony Spinner, who claims the network's hit drama Lost ripped off his 1977 concept of the same name contracted for ABC.
• Hachette Filipacchi says it'll port its its entire stable of magazines into digital formats by 2006, making it that much easier to steal its photo spreads ahead of newsstand sale dates.
• Variety's VLife magazine is going monthly, ensuring the revamped TV Guide's identity crisis will be worse than we thought.
• The Village Voice is said to be in talks to merge with the New Times, which you might know as that free marketplace weekly. The move would require all stories to be cleared by the publisher's Denver hub, then wrapped in four-line classified ads.
• The hottest ticket in town isn't Rosie O'Donnell's Sept. 20 Fiddler on the Roof debut but a chance to visit Judith Miller in prison. So far the TKTS line includes Tom Brokaw, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Bill Keller, Abe Rosenthal and, of course, Matt Cooper.
• When we first learned Simon Dumenco would be penning a weekly column for Advertising Age, we thought he'd match the rest of the magazine's stiff copy with straight-forward inches of his own. Instead, as he proves again this week, he reminds us the ad game is more comedy than drama.
• After losing more than half their net worth, the Bancroft family is making a carefully orchestrated exit from its Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones ownership to ensure future offspring will be able to revel in their wealth.
• If you haven't been keeping up with Rupert Murdoch's bedding of Hillary Clinton, David Carr's item on the New York Post's growing fondness with the senator should bring you up to speed.
• Craigslist users will have to beg and plead with Craig Newmark for advertising to ever show up on the site.
• Tim Gray is taking the reigns at Variety and Daily Variety, unless you count the fact that Peter Bart will remain editor-in-chief.
• Google and Yahoo are bitching about the size of the Web, which makes about as much sense as Anna Nicole Smith and Courtney Love arguing over smarts.
