Show Business

USA* 1 was born in four colors and with high hopes. All he needed, said the new magazine's President and Editor Rodney C. Campbell, was $1,000,000 (he had no trouble raising it) and 125,000 readers willing to pay $1.25 per copy for a monthly blend of history and news. But not enough of the initial subscribers stayed around. Campbell's $1,000,000 ran out quickly, and the 125,000 charter subscribers dwindled to 7,000. Last week, after just four issues, USA*1 gave up the ghost. It merged with another publishing experiment: A. & P. Heir Huntington Hartford's Show Magazine.

Merger was a polite term for the end of USA* 1 and an attempt by Show to put on a little fat. Show has steadily nibbled at Hartford's fortune since its first issue last September, shelled out $250,000 last January to gobble up Hugh (Playboy) Hefner's ill-conceived and short-lived Show Business Illustrated. USA*1 will cost Hartford next to nothing. USA*1 stockholders will be given an equity in the new corporation. Show's hope is to add a large part of USA* 1's circulation to its own 140,000. Editor Frank Gibney and Campbell, who will join Show's staff, now face the task of stirring the arts, news and history, too, into a salable stew. But that's Show business.

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