Metropolitan Home magazine, which started life as Better Homes and Gardens Apartment Ideas magazine, is the latest casualty of the recession. It will cease publication with its December issue, according to a Hachette Filipacchi announcement this morning. Met Home has been published under that title for 26 years. Ad pages for the third quarter were down 35.7 percent from the same period of 2008. The company plans to focus its energies on ELLE Decor.Below is an article I wrote in 1995 for Women’s Periodicals in the United States: Consumer Magazines, by Kathleen Endres and Therese Lueck.
Some things to note: The recession of 1990 caused a 27.2 percent advertising slide, putting the magazine in jeopardy at that time. It survived when Meredith sold it to Hachette. This recession, though, was one too many.
1969: the Woodstock nation met at White Lake, New York, Charles Manson and his family went on a murder spree and Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. McDonalds introduced the Big Mac, Sesame Street aired for the first time and a new magazine from Meredith Corporation, Apartment Ideas had its debut. The magazine featured pop art, day-glo colors, orange crate bookcases, wood paneling and zebra print wallpaper, all designed to improve the looks of the readers' "pads."
1981: Lady Diana Spencer became Princess Di and Ronald Reagan became president. The youngest baby boomers were now in the workplace and the oldest were eyeing a frightening new concept: middle age. Kellogg introduced NutriGrain cereal and Apartment Ideas magazine underwent a metamorphosis into Metropolitan Home. The new magazine featured pomegranate walls, sleek window shades, projection TVs and framed art prints, all geared to what editor Dorothy Kalins called "a generation of change."
The history of Metropolitan Hom is the history of its audience, those baby boomers who were recent college grads in 1969 and successful professionals by 1981. The "apartmentsia" -- as they were called in the first issue of Apartment Ideas -- had become urban landowners.
In the introductory editorial of the Apartment Ideas, editors explained the new magazine:
In the more than a year that went into planning and producing this premier issue we've been in touch with millions who want to live in apartments...and millions make what might be called a social movement. With only a little effrontery, Apartment Ideas hereby knights itself Number One Spokesman for that movement. (In all honesty, we're also the only spokesman.)
The magazine was an advocate for renters' rights, starting with its first editorial, "Apartment People Are Treated Like Second-Class Citizens." In an introductory memo, publisher Charles Coffin said Apartment Ideas would treat "the apartment like a permanent home rather than in the traditional manner of a stop-gap until a house is affordable." Average reader income was $8,000 a year.
The magazine carried the tagline: The Magazine of Better Apartment Living from Better Homes and Gardens and was promoted as one of the many special interest publications under the name of Meredith's flagship magazine, Better Homes and Gardens. There was no indication on the magazine itself nor on promotional materials as to the magazine's planned frequency. In 1970, it became quarterly, still under the Better Homes and Gardens name. It sold for $1.35 with a 9 1/2 X 12 1/2 format— standard for magazines of the late 1960s. The format was reduced to 8 1/2 X 11 in early 1971, and the cover price was dropped to $1. With the Fall, 1973 issue, the magazine's name changed to Apartment Life, and the price dropped a nickel, to $.95. In March 1977, the magazine became monthly, with a circulation of 800,000. Later that year the Better Homes and Gardens name was dropped from the cover; Apartment Life stood on its own, this time with the motto underneath the logo, "Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."
Editorial director of the first issue was Jim Autry and Contributing Editor was Jean LemMon. Jim Hufnagel became editor in 1971 with David Jordan succeeding him in 1973. Kalins joined the magazine as a contributing editor from New York in 1970, became executive editor in 1974 and editor in 1978.
In 1980, Apartment Life took in $9 million in advertising — an 11.9 percent rise over 1979. But the audience and its needs were changing, and the magazine was planning one of the most significant metamorphoses in magazine history — to a new name and new look to "keep up with and stay a bit ahead of the young movers and shakers" in its audience.
Apartment Life became Metropolitan Home in April, 1981 with 700,000 paid circulation, a 50/50 editorial-advertising balance and a cover price of $1.25. Kalins was editor-in-chief. In defining the new magazine, the editors tracked the changes in the magazine's audience:
The magazine saw its readers become, by turns, militantly anti-institution and anti-war, resolutely anti-materialistic; saw them turn back to the land and then back up from that; saw them never trust anyone over thirty only to wake up one day over thirty themselves.
Following research done by Daniel Yanklevich and Florence Skelly, editors created Metropolitan Home for "an increasingly rooted way of life," offering "longer, in-depth pieces; increased national coverage of real estate, professional interior design, money and food." According to audience surveys, more than half the magazine's readers owned homes. The term "apartment," promotional material noted, was limiting — "only an apartment is an apartment; but houses, co-ops, condos, lofts, townhouses and apartments are all Metropolitan Homes."
The first issue profiled design "superstar" Angelo Donghia; offered tips on shopping for Shirvan rugs and art nouveau silver; showcased the Metropolitan Home of the Month with the headline "Looking Forward into the Past: Postmodern" and ran tidbits about Cher's new house and Princess Caroline's new apartment.
In 1986 the first baby boomers turned 40 and Metropolitan Home celebrated with a facelift, becoming one of the country's top upscale magazines. In the September, 1986 issue, Kalins said the change, which indicated the "maturing of the magazine," created a design package that better matched the editorial package readers had grown to expect. It meant a wider format — 9 X 10 3/4 — heavier, glossier paper and thicker, glossier inks. Kalins emphasized audience input in the decision:
I spoke with readers across the country as we prepared our new package and the message was clear: "We don't mind if you make Met Home bigger. Just don't change the important things -- its usefulness, its friendliness, its taste." Rest assured. Because inside this oversized package with its super-heavy paper and extra-shiny inks is Classic Met Home. The qualities that make us special -- and unique in our field -- we'd be crazy to abandon.
The issue represented the changing lifestyle of readers, with an article entitled "10 Years After. From 1970s radical to 1980 refined, Two Funky Artists Settle In -- Without Selling Out." Other articles were on comfort food ("substantial meals that made you feel good back when Mom made 'em"), Jeep Chic and Eurostyle design.
The median household income of readers was $81,900 and the median home value was $184,200. Steve Burzan, publisher, explained the magazine's new focus:
So here we have the audience becoming very affluent, the advertising base becoming very affluent, and instead of competing with middle-class magazines, we find ourselves competing with Architectural Digest, Town & Country, Gourmet, New Yorker — the upscale giants.
Metropolitan Home was on a roll. It ran a total of 1220 advertising pages in 1989, an increase of 15 percent from the previous year. From 1987 to 1988, ad pages grew by 32 percent. It was named one of Adweek's "Ten Hottest Magazines" for 1987 and 1988. The magazine won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 1990 and was a finalist in general excellence in 1989 and a finalist in design in 1988 and 1989. Adweek's named Kalins Editor of the Year in 1988.
All that changed in the sobering 1990s when a lingering recession was especially hard on upscale magazines. Metropolitan Home 's ad page count in 1990 dropped to 888, a 27.2 percent slide from 1989. Circulation remained strong, however, increasing 11 percent, to 738, 973, in 1990.
Meredith considered redesigning the magazine, selling it or closing it down completely. In November, 1992, Meredith sold Metropolitan Home to Hachette Magazines for an estimated $10 million. Donna Warner succeeded Kalins as editor in chief; Kalins stayed at Meredith to work on magazine development. Hachette, publisher of Elle Decor and Home, changed the magazine to a bi-monthly and cut its rate base to 600,000 but retained its upscale look and philosophy.
In 1991, Jim Autry, who was by then president of the Magazine Group of Meredith Corporation, spoke of the magazine's history. Metropolitan Home, he said, had grown in what he called a Golden Age of Magazines, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In final analysis, he noted, the magazine had become "as establishment as a magazine can be." That establishment continues into the challenges of the 1990s, with its baby boomer audience looking wistfully at retirement. From orange crates to Shirvan rugs... to rocking chairs?
NOTE: You can browse through copies of Apartment Life, Apartment Ideas, and Metropolitan Home at Drake University's E.T. Meredith Center for Magazine Studies, 111 Meredith Hall, Des Moines, Iowa.
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