E-Zines Looking Like the Wave of Luxury’s Future

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This week is the launch of The Wall Street Journal’s new magazine dubbed WSJ, aimed at male readers with incomes topping $200,000 and chock full of ads featuring luxury items such as fast cars, cool beverages and beautiful vacation getaways.

A recent flurry of activity suggests e-zines may be the wave of the future in the upscale mag market. They are more economical to operate and they can be targeted specifically at big spenders through e-mail distribution.

Print publishers and media giants alike are snatching up popular e-mail products as a way to build their advertiser base and distinguish themselves from the competition.

High-end lifestyle magazine Modern Luxury acquired julib.com, an upscale, daily e-newsletter with a focus on the L.A. market.

“Our subscribers are busy women who want to know about the latest in fashion, food and fun, and they want to get their information all in one place, quickly,” said Juli Benlevi-Zeff, julib.com’s publisher and editor.

Comcast Corp., which recently announced the purchase of women’s print fashion magazine Glam, also bought the retail Web site Daily Candy, and is expected to launch its own fashion daily newsletter. Meanwhile, Burbank-based Walt Disney Co. recently acquired an e-newsletter called Ideal Bite for an undisclosed sum.


Ticketmaster Ticketless

In a move to dissuade ticket scalpers and fraudulent ticket sales, West Hollywood-based Ticketmaster is launching its new paperless ticket service next week when the rock band Metallica kicks off its tour in London to promote the new “Death Magnetic” album.

More than 15,000 music fans are expected to attend the concert at the O2 venue, but no paper tickets will be sold. Instead, customers must use a credit card or Visa debit card to purchase their tickets and show photo identification at the entrance of the venue. The card is swiped and the concertgoer is given a receipt.


Eastern Trip

Major Hollywood studios are reaching out to gain ancillary income from the areas where they have traditionally never gone before.

Culver City-based MGM Networks, a division of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., recently crafted a number of new deals to license its movie programming with cable and satellite operators in the far reaches of Eastern Europe.

Already in millions of homes across the former Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria, these new deals extend MGM’s reach into nations such as Serbia, Albania and Macedonia.

The expansion was made possible due to advances in subtitling technology that allow on-screen translations in the Cyrillic

alphabet.


DTS on the Move

Agoura-based DTS Inc., maker of audio products for home entertainment centers, has agreed to purchase a Countrywide Financial Corp. building at 5220 Las Virgenes Road in Calabasas for approximately $15.7 million, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Countrywide, which became a poster child of the home loan industry meltdown, was acquired by Bank of America in July for $2.5 billion in stock. Bank of America had earlier pumped $2 billion into the mortgage company. When the bank’s Chief Executive Ken Lewis came to Los Angeles in early July, he said that Countrywide would prove a profitable acquisition because Bank of America paid such a low price for it.

DTS plans to make the Calabasas office building its new headquarters. The move is expected to take place by year’s end.




Short Takes

Scott Friedman, former chief financial officer at World Poker Tour Enterprises based in Los Angeles, has landed at El Segundo-based Internet Brands Inc., which builds and acquires branded Web sites Santa Monica-based Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. recently named former Paramount Studios executive Alli Shearmur as president of a new motion picture production unit designed to make 12 to 16 films a year. Shearmur previously was co-president of production at Paramount Studios from 2005 into early 2007. She was involved with the “American Pie” and “Bourne Identity” movies West Hollywood-based National Lampoon Inc. recently acquired the website ZingFu.com from Zing Fu Enterprises LLC. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. ZingFu.com was one of the first to offer “widgetized” social content, allowing users to create greeting cards, virtual pets, and messages featuring their photos and share them across social platforms and by e-mail.


Staff reporter Brett Sporich can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 226.

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