Sunny Saturday

A new owner for the Review

When Carll Tucker bought the august Saturday Review in 1977, he described its typical reader as "somebody's aunt." Unable to attract a younger audience of nieces and nephews, Tucker, 28, sold the ailing magazine last week to Robert I. Weingarten, 38, owner of Financial World (circ. 59,000), an investment magazine. The purchase price was not revealed. Says Tucker, who will stay on as editor of Saturday Review (circ. 500,000): "Going at the speed we were going at, we weren't going to get from here to there."

Founded in 1924, Saturday Review flourished in the '50s and '60s as a staid journal of politics and literature under longtime Editor Norman Cousins. In 1971 it was sold to entrepreneurs Nicolas Charney and John Veronis, who turned the magazine into four separate monthlies on arts, education, science and society. The new format was confusing to readers and financially ruinous. Saturday Review went bankrupt in 1973, and Cousins came to the rescue. He ran it for the next four years and converted it to a fortnightly. Under Tucker, the magazine added more reportage and brighter graphics. But it continued losing between $500,000 and $1 million a year. (To keep losses from going even higher, Tucker changed it back to a monthly with the May issue, out this week.) Earlier this year, Tucker came close to selling the magazine to CBS, but the communications giant bailed out at the last moment.

Weingarten plans to focus his new property more narrowly on the arts, introduce a new design and make more generous use of color. He says, "There is a traditional interest among Saturday Review readers in books, movies, theater, recordings and cultural travel, like the Cannes Film Festival. The magazine has not been talking to those interests." Though proud of Saturday Review's heritage, Weingarten insists he is not embarked on a sentimental journey. Says he: "Magazines have to be run to make money."

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