The twins at the center of popular HGTV home improvement series “Property Brothers” are about to be the stars of their own magazine.
Drew and Jonathan Scott, known for helping homebuyers find and then create their dream homes, is teaming up with Meredith to launch a new quarterly magazine.
It marks the first major launch for Meredith since its $2.8 billion takeover of Time Inc. was wrapped up in January 2018. The only other new launches include titles such as Happy Paws, a magazine for pet owners.
Meredith said the new “Property Brothers” title, which has yet to receive an official title, will see 500,000 copies distributed to newsstands for the January 2020 launch.
Doug Olson, president of Meredith National Media, said that Meredith first started talking to the popular Scott brothers at the People and Entertainment Weekly party at the Emmy Awards in 2018. “We went after it and we got it,” Olson said.
The deal with Scott Brothers Global may be one of the best synergies yet to emerge from the Time Inc. acquisition, which has been running into trouble elsewhere. The integration problems caused Meredith to dim its profit outlook for the coming year, executives told Wall Street analysts last month. That in turn caused a massive drop in the Meredith stock price.
The stock ticked up slightly on Tuesday to $35.33, but was still trading far below its 52-week high of $62.40.
Meredith is clearly hoping that returning to the HGTV well can help it duplicate the success it has enjoyed with Magnolia Journal, the magazine it launched based on HGTV stars Joanna and Chip Gaines of the popular “Fixer Upper” home-improvement series.
That magazine launched in October 2016 and quickly emerged as one of the hottest launches in the magazine industry in years as it zoomed to a circulation of 1.3 million for the six months ending Dec. 31, 2018, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. The husband-and-wife “Fixer Upper” duo walked away from their HGTV show after the 2018 season, but unveiled plans to relaunch their own network with Discovery in the summer of 2020.
On its newest pending launch, Meredith said it will promote subscriptions by producing a 16-page mini-magazine that it plans to mail in a polybag with copies of Better Homes & Gardens, Real Simple and People. “I think we’ll do at least 5 million this way,” said Olson, “It takes advantage of our scale.” He’s also planning more traditional direct mail and blow-in cards to build a subscription base.
He said that there will be “limited inventory” on the ad side, with about 20 to 25 ad pages in an issue of just over 100 total pages. The more traditional ad to edit ratio has always been 50-50. But he said that the magazine will be relying on consumers for a larger share of its revenue, with a cover price of $9.99 per issue and a $20 subscription price.
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