The Industry / Hearst Empire Expands

New show on A&E, Winfrey mag keep new-product wave rolling
Hearst Magazines continues to aggressively extend its reach, dipping deeper into cable with the launch this fall of a House Beautiful series on A&E and starting a magazine with talk-show goddess Oprah Winfrey, set to premiere next spring.
House Beautiful, the 880,000-circ shelter monthly, and Hearst Entertainment are developing a weekly hour-long show that will bow as early as September on A&E, which is 37.5 percent owned by Hearst. The 13-episode series will feature tours of some of the world's most famous homes and offer decorating techniques. The show, which will feature members of HB's editorial staff, will run on either Saturdays or Sundays in daytime. A host has not been named.
For A&E, the House Beautiful tie-in show follows similar shelter programming on the network, including This Old House (with Bob Vila) and America's Castles, the historical/beautiful home-tour series.
HB has also recently branched off onto the Web with interactiveinteriors.com, whose features include helping users design their own kitchens. "When you have a strong brand such as House Beautiful, having a multimedia platform can be very beneficial to the business," said Michael Clinton, Hearst Magazines senior vp and chief marketing officer.
Meanwhile, after six months of talks between Winfrey, Hearst Magazines president Cathleen Black and Good Housekeeping editor in chief Ellen Levine, Hearst and Winfrey inked a deal last week to launch a women's general-interest magazine next March. The book, whose title will include Winfrey's name, will have an initial bimonthly frequency and a press run of 850,000. "Oprah is such a huge presence--she has such a powerful voice," said Black. "This is a gigan-tic opportunity."
Hearst will edit, publish and distribute the magazine; a search is on to hire an editor and a publisher.Winfrey in effect is licensing her name to the venture, although she will have input in the magazine's development and will likely contribute one article per issue, Levine said. The oprah.com Web site, which is part of the women-focused Oxygen Media online network, will be used for cross-promotion of subscriptions to the magazine.
"Oprah has a mission and a way to inspire women," Levine said. "So we expect the magazine to be inspirational."
The title will include advice and coverage on spirituality, family, friends, work, health and fitness. And, like Martha Stewart Living (2.4 million circ), it will be slightly oversized and use high-quality paper. Hearst said Estƒe Lauder has become the first advertiser to sign on.
"It's a very creative and intelligent approach," said Larry Cole, exec vp and U.S. media director at Ogilvy & Mather. "If you had to pick names of people to develop a publication around, Oprah's a great name."
The House Beautiful A&E show and the Winfrey mag are the latest in a series of new-product moves from Hearst this year, including last month's launch of Cosmopolitan spinoff CosmoGIRL! (850,000 circulation), and the Aug. 4 launch, with Talk Media, of Tina Brown's 500,000-circulation Talk.