California's Magazine War

Holding the Manhattan carpetbaggers at bay

Los Angeles magazine has a weight problem. The glossy monthly's 296-page August issue is so loaded with ads that readers have a hard time dogging a feature story through the thickets of plug. "We're beginning to turn some advertisers down," admits Seth Baker, president of CHC Corp., the magazine's parent company. "We're going to have to be more selective."

This is not exactly the predicament that L.A.'s managers envisioned a scant 16 months ago. Then they were hunkered down for Clay-day: the invasion of their territory by Clay Felker and his new New West magazine, supported by a $4 million start-up budget. As a California clone of Felker's sassy, brassy New York magazine, New West, it seemed, had only to come and be seen to conquer. "In fact," says L.A. 's Baker, "New West is the best thing that ever happened to us."

The 17-year-old L.A.'s response to the "carpetbaggers," as some Californians dubbed Felker's forces, was to spruce up its graphics, sharpen its point of view and attract a bunch of bright new byliners. The defenders were helped by all the hoopla Felker fomented: in effect, it sold Southern Californians on the notion that they deserved a first-rate magazine. Since February 1976, L.A.'s circulation has soared from 90,000 to 128,566. Ad pages are up 50% (to 184 pages in August) over .he same period. L.A. ranks No. 3 (after Yachting and Trailer Life) in ad pages for all U.S. monthlies, and is No. 1 among city magazines.

To be sure, the biweekly New West has racked up an impressive 315,038 circulation and an average of 52 ad pages per issue since its inception. Yet the new magazine so far lacks the style and focus of its competitor, and seems to have leveled out in readership and advertising gains. New West's subscription-renewal rate is running at a disappointing 40%, v. L.A. 's robust 76%; the latter also has a healthy newsstand circulation at $1.50, 50% more than New West's at $1. As a further measure of L.A. 's success, the magazine and two smaller CHC publications will be bought next week by ABC for $ 10.5 million. Four years ago, Felker could have taken L.A. for $500,000.

Instead, Felker started up New West. His formula was simple enough: the service chic that had worked so brilliantly in New York should also succeed in California. The magazine dove into muckraking political coverage although Baker believes that Californians are less intrigued by politics than are New Yorkers.

New West's extravagant start-up costs were partly responsible for Felker's fall and the New York Magazine Co.'s takeover by Australian Publisher Rupert Murdoch (TIME cover, Jan. 17). The magazine was turned over to a dizzying succession of new editors and writers struggling on their own. Murdoch has not ordered any major changes for New West, possibly because he is absorbed with his more important acquisition, the New York Post. As a result, Managing Editor Frank Lalli, a holdover from the Felker regime, has been given greater autonomy.

However, though lively and often imaginative, New West seems to be haunted by a Felkerian phantom: its editors on occasion run the kind of features they feel would have been whipped up by Felker. The results can be disastrous. A notable example was a cover story in July based on the premise that since Governor Jerry Brown was 39 and unmarried (though a frequent companion of Linda Ronstadt's), he would be a likely target for antihomosexual smears in next year's gubernatorial race. Even Felker was moved to protest from the sidelines. Said he: "It was not the kind of story I would have run. It's got nothing to do with Brown's ability as Governor." Says Kevin Starr, a fourth-generation Californian who was formerly Afew West's Northern California bureau chief "The mentality there seems to be 'The Ten Best Places to Get Pate When You're Marching with Cesar Chavez.' It's a strange combination of hyperchic and diffusedly leftist outrage at the corruption of America."

While New West has been floundering for a beachhead--it has sharply increased its proportion of service-oriented features --L.A. has steadily tightened its hold on the turf. Under Editor Geoff Miller it has spiced how-where-what consumerism with monthly contributions by such luminaries as Joyce Haber (The Users), who can be a sharp social observer as well as the town's top gossipist, and acerbic Movie Critic John Barbour--along with some of the shrewdest assessments of food, wine and film of any city magazine.

L.A. also serves up some tough topical reportage. A recent article on the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner's unsavory condition was followed by Publisher George Hearst Jr.'s resignation. A critical study of auto-insurance inequities contributed to a city investigation of rate structures; a look at some of the top Californians in Washington saddled doze-prone Senator S.I. Hayakawa with the possibly durable tag "the Sominex Kid."

Miller has also boosted newsstand sales by featuring a show-biz celebrity on the cover each month. The August cover offering a guide to 500 Southern California restaurants, pictures Rex Harrison awaiting dinner with a salivating smile--and an uncorked bottle of Chateau Latour '69. That, in the kingdom of Gallo is class.

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