Ebb Tide

After 32 years, Tide ebbed last week in a sea of red and disappeared. A trade magazine for admen, Tide was founded by TIME Inc. in 1927, sold in 1930, and drifted through a series of ownerships before Bill Brothers Publications (Sales Management, Rubber World) gave it a whirl in 1956. In a field dominated by Advertising Age (1958 circ. 41,961), Tide was always out. Last week the magazine was absorbed (estimated price: $150,000) and closed out by Vision, Inc., a closemouthed Madison Avenue publishing house that operates a grab-bag set of properties.

The new owners put out the fortnightly Vision (circ. 113,315), a notably uncontentious Spanish-language business-news magazine that is flown into 19 Latin American countries. Visao (circ. 45,886), a sister publication to Vision, is a Portuguese-language news weekly in Brazil. In addition, the company has a half interest in Semana, a news weekly published in Bogota, Colombia, owns the profitable business-pamphleteering ("Just Between Office Girls") National Foremen's Institute.

The sharp eye behind Vision belongs to Publisher William E. Barlow, 41, a personable promoter who persuaded about 27 investors to put up $750,000 to start the company in 1949. The biggest pocketbook behind Vision belongs to Board Chairman J. Noel Macy, of the family that controls a profitable string of nine dailies in New York's wealthy Westchester County. Barlow, who has steered through plenty of adversity of his own, will merge Tide's ankle-deep circulation (12,825) with the weekly Printers' Ink (circ. 32,231), another property in the wide-angle field of Vision, and hope for a change in publishing trade winds.

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