New media, postal issues dominate ABP meeting - American Business Press

The publishing world is about to push ahead into phase two of online development.

Now that magazines have awakened to the seemingly endless possibilities that new media presents, publishers are beginning to hammer out money-making business plans. If 1994 was the year of discovery, and 1995 the year of definition, then 1996 will be the year of production, leading to profitable electronic-publishing franchises by the end of the century.

At least, that was the message delivered by Michael Kolowich, president of AT&T's Interchange Online Network, during the annual American Business Press spring meeting in Aventura, Florida, held at the end of April. Kolowich said November 1 is the day electronic media will be reborn for magazine publishers and everyone else-a symbolic date that represents the height of the budget-making season, when publishers are going to accelerate spending for their new-media experiments.

Kolowich also predicted that success in cyberspace will depend more on subscription and transaction fees than on charging users for time spent. Amy Snyder, an executive with Deloitte & Touche's consulting division, noted that online transactions will be worth $3.5 billion by the year 2000, with $1.4 billion of that spent on business-to-business activity. "Get on the Infobahn and get in the way of all of those transactions," she urged the audience.

The reclassification battle

One thing ABP members definitely want to get in the way of is the U.S. Postal Service's ongoing reclassification case. At a time when business publishers should be celebrating their strongest ad-page gains in years, ABP officers were busy outlining plans to combat the proposed postal changes,. which could lead to rate increases as high as 17 percent for those magazines unable to meet certain work-sharing requirements--a large portion of ABP's membership.

Reclassification is "the Armageddon for second-class mail," said Roger Friedman, president of New York City-based Lebhar-Friedman and chairman of the ABP for the past year. But the organization is armed for battle. "We think we can make a pretty strong case that the Postal Service's research is defective," suggested Carroll Dowden, president of Montvale, New Jersey-base Dowden Publishing and secretary of the ABP.

The group has hired Arlington, Virginia-based Nathan Associates to study the economic impact of reclassification on smaller publishers as well as on the Postal Service itself. The ABP, which is headquartered in New York City, is publish also working with the Society of National Association Publications and other parties to get across their concerns to the Postal Rate Commission.

With the addition of 17 new members since january, the ABP now has 140 members representing 801 publications, an all-time high. That number is expected to grow in the coming months as a result of a bylaw change relaxing membership requirements. The group recently voted to allow audited association magazines, audited special-interest consumer magazines and audited annuals and semi-annuals to seek membership. Currently, the ABP's member dues are based solely on ad revenues. But that structure is likely to be reviewed by incoming chairman Keith Crain, vice chairman of Chicago-based Crain Communications.

Although the conference attracted 262 attendees--a recent high, according to ABP president Gordon Hughes--several members were conspicuous by their absence. The sole representative of Newton, Massachusetts-based Cahners Publishing Co.--the magazine unit of the world's third-largest media concern, Reed Elsevier--was director of communications Harry King. King explained that Robert Krakoff, president and CEO of Reed Publishing USA, had been called to a meeting at the corporate offices in Amsterdam. Also absent were executives from Cleveland-based Advanstar Communications and Manhasset, New York-based CMP Publications.

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