Yuku free message boards

September 24, 2008

THE rock may be crumbling a bit.

Condé Nast's "Movies Rock" concert, which last year was a Hollywood counterpart to the successful, Emmy-winning "Fashion Rocks" concert at Radio City Music Hall - has been bumped.

The first "Movies Rock" was staged last December at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles and aired as a TV special on CBS on Dec. 7.

It featured a separate magazine overseen by Vanity Fair Editor-in-Chief Graydon Carter that was sent to subscribers of 14 of the company's magazines including Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Vogue, GQ and Glamour.

Richard Beckman, president of the Condé Nast Media Group, which runs both "Movies Rock" and "Fashion Rocks," said the movie event hasn't been canceled - just postponed.

He added the decision was reached months ago with the Producers Guild and Entertainment Industry Foundation.

One insider conceded that "Movies Rock" might have been quietly scuttled in the spring, but it was included in the company's 2008 budget projections and that publishers initially expected to reap the extra ad revenue from the magazine.

Beckman said he still plans to do a second "Movies Rock" next year, but a date hasn't been set.

He said he never felt it was going to be an annual event, unlike the six-year-old "Fashion Rocks" which coincides with Fashion Week in the Big Apple.

"We're working on a date right now," said Beckman of the next "Movies Rock." "We're tentatively looking at the second quarter in 2009, around June."

Moving the date, however, has a downside: None of the Condé Nast magazines will be able to get a boost in their anemic December ad-page tally, a very closely watched barometer at Condé Nast.

"It probably averaged around 25 ad pages per magazine," said one source.

The loss of those ad pages, which dressed up their sales figures last year, are going to make the tallies look even more dismal this year at a time when publishers are desperately scrambling for ads.

The New Yorker has seen its ad pages sink nearly 24 percent to 994 through the Sept. 22 issue, according to Media Industry Newsletter, while Vogue, the flagship and most profitable magazine in the empire last year, is off nearly 6 percent to 2,462 ad pages through the October issue. Glamour, the second-most profitable magazine in the empire, is down more than 9 percent to 1,505 through October.

And with the economy expected to sputter into the new year, it could well mean that "Movies Rock," quietly fades away.

"It wasn't very profitable and took an enormous amount of time and energy from the individual publishers," said the source.

However, Beckman insists it will return.