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TIDE, APRIL 15, 1945    19

TIDE

SEVENTEEN: A UNIQUE CASE STUDY

In eight months the teen-age magazine's phenomenal growth has earned it an important spot in the ranks of publishing successes. (SEE COVER)

Seventeen, the sprightly service magazine for high school girls, likes to call itself "the biggest sellout since 'Oklahoma'." Actually, it is more than that. It is the "Oklahoma!" of the magazine publishing business. Like  Life, it is the sort of dazzling success which attracts new money and new ideas to magazines, makes prospective backers overlook the many disasters and convinces the skeptics that publishing still has a frontier and a future.

Few publishers realized last September, however, that another magazine phenomenon was in the making. For its vital statistics were not impressive. Its name was Seventeen, which many considered the first mistake. Described as a highly-geared, 15c slick monthly, it grew out of a defunct movie magazine. It belonged to Triangle Publications, Inc., an outfit with a reputation more for velocity than stability, and one which has scratched magazines and race horses with the same apparent unconcern. And its reader market, the teen-age girl, was regarded by many advertisers as a dubious, if personable, purchasing agent.

Nevertheless, in eight months Seventeen has left many of its growing pains far behind. This is its record to date: its circulation this month soared to 694,000; its fifth issue, January, carried a greater advertising linage than any of the women's service magazines; it has lost $500,000 so far, or just about half what dynamic, 37-year-old publisher Walter H. Annenberg was prepared to gamble.* (See chart, p. 20.)

Next month, it will sprout some innovations. Its new page rate, up 60% from $750 to $1,200, goes into effect in May, will finally bring the space rates more into line with the circulation growth. (Since the new rate is based on a 400,000 circulation, there may be another rate increase soon.) And it will have the results of some exhaustive research, collected by the firm of Benson & Benson (Princeton, N. J.), which quizzed 1,000 readers and their mothers on buying and reading habits.

The curtain went up on Seventeen last spring, when Annenberg decided to revamp Stardom, a "none too successful," two-year-old movie magazine.  As a starter, he added some "young fashions." Then, at the suggestion of Dr. Mehemed Fehmy Agha, who had been engaged as art director at the recommendation of agencyman Leo McGivena, Triangle decided to transform Stardom into a strictly fashion book, snare some of the overflow advertising from such magazines as Mademoiselle, Glamour and Charm.

Enter Mrs. Valentine

Next, Annenberg hired Helen Valentine away from her job as promotion manager of Mademoiselle, to edit the new magazine. For getting the Seventeen idea across, Annenberg and his general manager, Kenneth M. Friede, give all the credit to Mrs. Valentine who, though 51 and a grandmother, is as vivacious as the typical Seventeen reader. Mrs. Valentine agreed to take over on one condition: that the publication be edited as a service magazine to meet the needs of teen-age girls. Before going to Street & Smith to work on Mademoiselle, she had spent six years at Conde-Nast, doing promotion on Vogue and editing the Vogue Pattern Book. There she concluded that despite the healthy circulations of Calling All Girls (556,330) and the American Girl (202,752), the field still had great opportunities.
The initial research on the project consisted mostly of working with government statistics; from there Triangle decided to gear Seventeen to the 6,000,000 girls between 13 and 18. The idea proved a natural from the start: even before they saw a dummy, 164 advertisers and their 85 agencies had bought up all the available space in the first two issues.

Newsstand Sellout

The first issue's print order of about 400,000 sold out on newsstands in a week. After two months, Triangle killed a school distribution plan, handled through Curtis and Crowell-Collier, because of the lack of copies. Principally a newsstand seller, Seventeen nevertheless now has on hand some 240,000 subscriptions. Finally, last Jan-

[[image]] 
[[caption]]
(L. to R.) SEVENTEEN'S ROSEN, FRIEDE & ANNENBERG
"Who is Teena, Judy Jeckyll or Formalda Hyde?" 
[[/caption]]


*To people outside advertising or publishing, a $500,000 loss in the first eight months might seem something to groan, rather than to sing, about. Such initial losses are more common than uncommon with big publishing ventures, however, and the fact is, on a relatively small capital investment and in less than a year, Triangle has built a property worth several times what it has plunged into it. 

Transcription Notes:
There's no need to indicate [[italics]] or [[bolded]] words, so I have removed these notations from the transcription. Thanks for all your hard work! - Caitlin, TC Coordinator