Plan for the Post

Subscribers to the Saturday Evening Post are in for a surprise. The magazine lost $3.5 million last year, and there has been genuine concern that it might soon be forced to close down. Last week the Curtis Publishing Co.'s new president, Martin S. Ackerman, 36, acted to cut operating expenses sharply--and keep the Post alive. He will, he announced, shrink circulation from its present 6,800,000 to 3,000,000 or less, mostly by the simple act of canceling subscriptions. Readers dropped from the mailing list will be offered their choice of switching to other Curtis publications, accepting their money back, or, through an agreement with Time Inc., subscribing to LIFE.

The pruning will be selective. Post subscribers who already receive LIFE will not be affected. Generally, the Post and LIFE will share high-quality circulation--subscribers who live in urban areas. Editorial content of the Post, now a mixture of meat and corn, will gradually become more uniformly sophisticated, Ackerman expects. "The problem we've had at the Post," he says, "is not knowing whether we're serving a mass or a class audience. The Post cannot make it in its present condition."

To help the magazine through its change, Time Inc. has agreed to lend Curtis $5,000,000, and will also become a client of Curtis' printing facilities and circulation subsidiaries. LIFE, of course, will benefit as well. At least 500,000 Post readers are expected to switch to LIFE by year's end (and substantially more, later), boosting its weekly circulation to 8,000,000 by 1969. "We expect," said Publisher Jerome S. Hardy, "that LIFE will be clearly established as the No. 1 magazine of its size in the United States in every respect."

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