Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Ladies and gentlemen, our first question comes from the line of David Kestenbaum with Morgan Joseph. Please proceed, sir.
David Kestenbaum - Morgan Joseph
Okay, thanks a lot. You had a significant change in the guidance for breakeven on the magazine. Can you give us a little more color on what the -- what exactly the difficulty is and what the challenges are? And, are you, kind of, indicating now the breakeven is back half of 2010? Is that what you're saying by your new guidance?
Rich Battista
Hi, David. It's Rich. How are you?
Rich Battista
Good.
Rich Battista
Good. Well, I'll answer the second question first. We're not specifically implying that. I think what Bedi said on the paper and that within the release, specifically what we're saying about it. I'll say a couple of things on the magazine. First, we -- as I mentioned in my remarks, we're highly encouraged by the consumer response we're getting to the magazine, clearly the response from the entertainment, the Hollywood community of the magazine. We're very pleased with the attraction of the product in terms of reaching demographics, and the obvious interest and engagement in the magazine. So, all of those are very encouraging to me, and one of the, obviously, major reasons why I feel excited about the future for the magazine overall. I'd say the one area that has been more of a challenge should be advertising. As we said in some of our other calls, there has been a wait and see attitude from a number of hosts, probably longer than we expected. I think for us, we need to remember that we basically launched a brand new magazine and it takes time when you do that to get people either back to the magazine, because as I said before, it was a brand new proposition with different economics. So, I think the advertising piece is overall soft print market right now, and we have certainly been affected by that, and I think that's clearly one of the areas that we are now seeing more traction than we were before. For instance, we are now up, I think, the first five issues -- correct me if I'm wrong, Bedi, the first five issues.
Bedi Singh
Yes, the first five issues following the launch compared to the five issues this year, we are up 9%.
- To read the full transcript on Seeking Alpha, click here »


