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Attention, Publishers: 'Iconic' Is Not A Business Model

This article is more than 10 years old.

Now this is an icon. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Let's review what the year 2013 hath wrought so far in the media industry.

Reader's Digest, staggering under $1.2 billion in debt, has filed for bankruptcy for the second time in four years. Rolling Stone owner Jann Wenner managed to stave off a bankruptcy filing of his own by refinancing $200 million of debt under spartan new terms.

And in the biggest news of all, Time Inc. is negotiating to spin off most of its magazines into a new company to be controlled by Meredith Corp. Held back from the deal will be Time magazine, Fortune and Sports Illustrated; Meredith is "said not to want them," according to Michael Wolff.

If the previous sentence reads strangely, it's probably because you're unused to seeing Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated mentioned without the word "iconic" before their names. Ditto Rolling Stone and Readers's Digest, for that matter.

Just what it means besides "big" and "old" is a little unclear, but for big, old magazines, "iconic" is the self-descriptor of choice. Publishers wave it around like a talisman that has the magic power to make falling ad revenues and shrinking subscriber rolls irrelevant. Magazines that are iconic can never die. They're too beloved by readers, too firmly lodged in the  culture.

Except that, to judge from the body count in recent years, "iconic" is more nearly a synonym for "screwed." Start with the magazines named above. Add to that list Newsweek, which ceased print publication in December; Playboy, acquired by a private equity firm in 2011, with founder Hugh Hefner forfeiting control; Businessweek, sold for $6 million in 2009; TV Guide, sold for a dollar the year before that...seeing a pattern?

It's not that there's anything wrong with either bigness or oldness. Two of the oldest magazines in existence, The Economist and The Atlantic, are also among those making the most successful transitions to the digital era. (I would humbly add FORBES to the list of legacy publishers ably navigating that change.)

But a publisher who comes to believe too firmly in his own magazine's iconic status is like a drug dealer who becomes overfond of his own product. It's inviting disaster. Using a certain doomed cruise liner to invoke the folly of invulnerability may be a cliche, but it's also instructive. As with ships, the bigger a brand gets, the more time-consuming and expensive it becomes to change course, and the less willing anyone is to shoulder the responsibility for steering a new one. All those consumers who love your brand so much, they'll never let it die? They're a mixed blessing, noisily protesting any effort to modernize, no matter how wise or necessary. The brands that survive are the ones that know when to ignore their most loyal fans.

But it's the owners themselves whose reverent sense of the iconic presents the greatest hazard. Look at CNN, whose corporate kinship to Time Inc. is no accident. For a decade and a half, it's been letting itself be outflanked and out-innovated by the nimbler, less tradition-bound Fox News and MSNBC. All the while, a succession of network chiefs have patiently explained that it's because CNN stands for something bigger and truer than its competitors that it won't stoop to their ratings-grubbing tactics.

New boss Jeff Zucker has dropped hints that he views CNN's mission a bit less self-seriously, but it wasn't a promising sign that one of his first moves was to bring back its old voice-of-God-style network promos. The next time you hear James Earl Jones intoning "This. Is. CNN," pay close attention. That's the sound of a brand telling itself it's an icon. It's the cry of an endangered species.