FLASHBACK: Soap Mags Fight For Hearts & Dollars 1988

THE MEDIA BUSINESS; Soap Opera Magazines Fight For Fans' Hearts and Dollars

By Eleanor Blau
New York Times
October 24, 1988

Psst! Skye will try to kill Barbara on ALL MY CHILDREN. Mason will develop a third personality on SANTA BARBARA. And David will turn out to be the father of Nina's baby on THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS.

Those are only predictions, mind you, and they are a little tongue-in-cheek at that. They appear in the Nov. 7 issue of Soap Opera Update, a glossy magazine that appears every three weeks for people who care about such matters.

Apparently a lot of people do. Update, which made its debut last January, reports a circulation of nearly 300,000. Its biggest competitor is Soap Opera Digest - circulation 1.1 million. The granddad in the field - Daytime TV, begun in 1969 - sells 200,000 copies. It is published monthly by Sterling's Magazines Inc., which also offers a handful of other publications, including Daytime TV Presents and Soap Opera Stars.

There are also other magazines, newsletters, syndicated columns and even books about daytime serials.

Like the other magazines in the field, Update and the Digest interview stars of daytime serials and offer other features.

Unlike the others, they focus on synopses of the serials - a not surprising similarity, as both magazines were founded by the same publishers, Jerome and Angela Shapiro. The Shapiros started the Digest in 1975, sold it in 1980 and now hope to woo "upscale" readers for Update.

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Competition Called a Plus

Some say the competition is good for business. If Soap Opera Digest attracts more readers, "we get more readers," Mr. Shapiro said. "We did surveys; when we sold magazines in supermarkets, that didn't take anything away from their sales."

Gerry M. Ritterman of Soap Opera Digest said, "I hope Update succeeds." Mr. Ritterman, who bought the Digest's publisher, the Network Publishing Corporation, two years ago, said, "It will help us by gaining credibility for the soap opera."

The genre's stature has already grown. Until a decade ago, "the term soap opera was derogatory," said Allen Rosenberg, who is in charge of the Daytime magazines.

A New Acceptance

Then the shows gained in popularity, so the magazines did, too.

Mr. Rosenberg attributed that gain in part to the shows' use of "stars as contract players, like Farley Granger." He also credited late 1970's broadcasts of GENERAL HOSPITAL, whose characters Luke and Laura "were on everybody's lips."

Executives at the Digest and Update said single-copy sales account for about 80 percent of their revenues, with 20 percent from advertising for goods like cigarettes and beauty products. Subscriptions are minimal.

Supermarket checkout stands are the major place to find the Digest, which is priced at $1.75, and they will soon be the main sites for Update ($1.95), Mr. Shapiro said.

Mr. Ritterman said the privately owned Digest was making a profit, but he would not disclose figures. Peggy Powers, Update's advertising director, said she doubted that her magazine was yet breaking even. The Advertising Picture

Both magazines hope to increase advertising. But executives at Sterling's Daytime publications consider advertising only a "minor consideration," Mr. Rosenberg said, given their mostly black and white newsprint pages that cannot accommodate splashy color ads. The Digest is mostly newsprint, too.

But the full-color, full-sized Update can accommodate lots of splashy ads. And it has been offering rates much lower than the Digest's - $2,250 for a four-color page, compared with the Digest's $14,300. The hurdle is to convince potential advertisers that Update will exist a year from now, Ms. Powers said.

Update's readers are mostly women 18 to 49 years old, 60 percent of whom work outside the home, she said. Some 31 percent earn more than $35,000; an additional 40 percent earn more than $25,000.

Digest readers earn an average of $25,000 to $27,000, Mr. Ritterman reported, adding that he was proud that the figure is 20 percent lower than reader incomes reported by the "seven sisters" - publications that include Good Housekeeping and Ladies' Home Journal. Products for his lower-income readers, he said, are "underadvertised."

Not Scandal Sheets

Unlike some movie-star magazines, the major soap opera publications stay away from unseemly gossip. "Readers don't want to hear anything bad about the characters," Mr. Rosenberg said.

Angela Shapiro observed: "Viewer loyalty is not necessarily to a show or an actor but to the character. Is Patch going to find out who committed the murder? Will so-and-so find out so-and-so is cheating on him? They get so caught up in the story line that seldom do you get a request for an interview with a personality."