Posted on Mon, Jul. 19, 2010

Publishers scout another dimension — 3D

BY BRIDGET CAREY
bcarey@MiamiHerald.com

Hoping to capitalize on the buzz of 3-D movies and television, the three-year-old Miami-based bi-weekly hip hop pop culture news and gossip magazine is experimenting with the 3-D swimsuit calendar. It’s also adding “peek-a-boo” cover flaps — flashy stunts that other magazines are also starting to add.

Playboy jumped on the trend in June with its first 3-D centerfold. And Rolling Stone sold a “peek-a-boo” cover edition in June, where the cover peeled away to reveal a smiling rapper Jay-Z.

“We’re seeing a lot of this taking place now, where we’re using technology to enhance the value of print,” said Samir Husni, a University of Mississippi professor, better known in the industry as Mr. Magazine. “Technology made it possible for the costs to have dropped dramatically.”

Husni said magazines with extra effects tend to be heavily sponsored, making production costs affordable.

That was the case with Hip Hop Weekly’s 3-D calendar as well. The 12-month “Flawless Beauties” calendar, sponsored by sportswear line FB Legacy and Sobieski Vodka, comes with red and blue paper glasses, packaged with a special swimsuit edition of Hip Hop Weekly for $9.99. It will remain on stands several weeks longer than the regular issue that comes every 14 days for $3.99.

Hip Hop Weekly Design Director Wor Whosane said he taught himself to use the software that turns ordinary photos into an image that can be seen in 3-D with red and blue glasses.

PEEK-A-BOO

Tuesday’s issue will also be the magazine’s first peek-a-boo cover, where an extra paper flap image of a door peels away to reveal model Tahiry in a swimsuit.

The magazine will also use a peek-a-boo cover for Aug. 3 when it launches it’s first issue of Skyboxx, a monthly magazine for sports lifestyle and entertainment featuring Miami Heat’s newest superstar, LeBron James. Readers can peel away James’ former Cavalier’s jersey to reveal a Heat jersey underneath. Scott said he plans to have peek-a-boo covers for most, if not all, of future Skyboxx issues.

Though this is the Hip Hop Weekly’s first swimsuit calendar, but it’s not the first for publishers Mays and Scott, who helped start hip hop-culture magazine The Source.

At The Source, which Mays founded while attending Harvard in 1988 and has since grown to be called “The Bible of Hip-Hop,” the calendars were “a great seller for us, and we wanted to take it a step further with 3-D,” Scott said.

Mays said he and Scott left The Source after conflicts over the magazine’s direction. “When we met, we figured that the monthly format is really a dying breed, at least in the way it has been done over the past 10, 15, 20 years.”

So the two moved to Miami — a city where they hosted The Source Awards and where they ran a nightclub for a year before it closed in 2004.

“We had a vision for Miami a long time ago that it was going to emerge as the next entertainment capital,” Mays said. “We also realized we don’t need to be in New York anymore, with the way technology has evolved. Our overhead is like a fraction of a fraction of what we used to produce The Source.”

The magazine, which is printed in Hollywood, Fla., consists of a staff of 12 who most don’t work in Miami — several staffers are spread among urban centers like New York and Atlanta — which also keeps costs down.

It also doesn’t invest heavily in its website, and instead shares some content with already established sites MediaTakeOut.com and WorlStarHipHop.com. When Hip Hop Weekly broke the news of singer and songwriter Alicia Keys’ pregnancy, it spread word of the news through partners.

Mays said the magazine has reached a yearly revenue of $3 million since its launch in 2007, and sells about 100,000 copies each issue. In December, Hip Hop Weekly began being featured in Wal-Mart checkout lanes — a huge plus for a magazine largely bought on impulse. The magazine is only now begining to offer subscriptions.

GETTING A LIFT

Magazines in general are starting to see an economic lift. For the first time in nine quarters, magazines posted gains in advertsing revenue during the second quarter of 2010, a 5.7 percent increase compared to the same time in 2009, according to Publishers Information Bureau, a trade group.

“During the last 3 years, as overall newsstand sales for the consumer magazine industry have declined, Hip Hop Weekly has been an outstanding bright spot, completely bucking the industry trend by experiencing sales growth of 20 percent for 2009 versus 2008,” said Anthony DiBisceglie, vice president of Business Development for Curtis Circulation, the distributor of Hip Hop Magazine.

But will investments like cover flaps and 3-D glasses make a big impact on sales?

“At the end of the day, it’s all a gamble,” Scott said.