Inherited Deal

Last spring, when Publisher Samuel I. Newhouse went shopping for an anniversary gift for his wife Mitzi (TIME, April 6), he got more than he was looking for. In paying $5,000,000 for majority control of Conde Nast Publications Inc. (Vogue, House & Garden, Glamour and Bride's Magazine), Newhouse caught Conde Nast in the midst of negotiations to buy the U.S. publishing house, of Street & Smith. Last week Sam Newhouse, no man to duck opportunity, closed the inherited deal.

For a reported $4,000,000 plus an option for Street & Smith's owners on some 10% of Conde Nast's stock, Sam Newhouse assumed proprietorship of one of the oldest periodical publishers in the U.S. Established in 1855, Street & Smith prospered with an array of derring-do pulps from such prolific potboilers as Horatio Alger Jr., Ned Buntline, Josh Billings and Bill Nye, bought the early works of Booth Tarkington, Rupert Hughes, Fannie Hurst and many others. Street & Smith writers added many a resonant name to the ranks of folk heroes: Frank Merriwell, Nick Carter, Buffalo Bill. But with time, the derring-do pulps gave way to dreary ones: Detective Story, Love Story Magazine and comic books. In 1949 Street & Smith dropped pulps altogether and turned slick.

For his $4,000,000 Sam Newhouse gets two fashion magazines--Charm and Mademoiselle--and Living for Young Homemakers, with a combined circulation of 1,826,360, plus Astounding Science Fiction, Air Progress, Hobbies for Young Men, Baseball Annual and Football Annual. Newhouse plans to blend Street & Smith's Charm (circ. 635,706) with Conde Nast's Glamour (circ. 671,441), will otherwise keep the firm intact as a subsidiary of Conde Nast. Street & Smith lost better than $200,000 last year, but this is a condition that Sam Newhouse, whose 14 newspapers and seven radio and TV stations comprise a productive $175 million chain, intends to correct.

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