Hearst to Launch The Pioneer Woman Magazine
December 08 2016 - 12:29AM
Dow Jones News
By Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg
Ree Drummond, the entertaining food blogger who has translated
her life on a ranch in Pawhuska, Okla., into a mini-empire of
books, housewares products and a cooking show on Food Network, is
hitting the newsstands next year.
Hearst Magazines, in partnership with Food Network majority
owner Scripps Networks Interactive, is launching a new magazine in
June titled The Pioneer Woman, named after the brand Ms. Drummond
has built. The first issue will be sold exclusively at Wal-Mart
Stores Inc., which also sells Ms. Drummond's housewares line.
"It is a little old school, but one thing I've learned through
having a blog and then having cookbooks with some of the same
recipes, is that people want to hold something in their hand and
kick back and read it," Ms. Drummond said in an interview. "It's a
natural next step in terms of a medium I haven't tackled yet."
The joint-venture publication will feature Ms. Drummond's many
practical tips on how to make food that children and adults enjoy
-- lemon pancakes, French dip sandwiches -- as well as advice on
how to entertain, humor, and her observations on living and working
on a ranch.
"It will be a lifestyle magazine, not just a food magazine,"
said Ellen Levine, Hearst's editorial executive overseeing the
project. Hearst typically puts out two issues of a new title,
tallies the consumer response, then does additional research before
deciding how to proceed.
Sharing her experiences in the rural heartland has helped make
Ms. Drummond a hit with readers. Her last adult book, 2015's "The
Pioneer Woman Cooks: Dinnertime," has sold an impressive 714,000
hardcover copies, according to Nielsen BookScan, which tracks 85%
of retail book sales in the U.S. excluding digital copies.
Altogether, Ms. Drummond's four adult cookbooks, memoir and 12
children's books have 7 million copies in print in all formats in
the U.S., according to her publisher, William Morrow & Co., an
imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. HarperCollins, like The Wall
Street Journal, is owned by News Corp.
Ms. Drummond's culinary skills led to a cable TV show titled
"The Pioneer Woman" that made its debut on Food Network in summer
2011. Since then, it has emerged as one of Food Network's top-rated
daytime series, said a spokeswoman for the network.
Hearst Magazines long has embraced partnerships that can help
market its magazines. It debuted Food Network Magazine in 2008 and
HGTV Magazine in 2011, each in partnership with Scripps-owned
networks. In 2014, Hearst launched Dr Oz The Good Life magazine in
partnership with Dr. Mehmet Oz.
"All have been very profitable," said Michael Clinton, president
of marketing and publishing director of Hearst Magazines. "Our
partners have huge fan bases, and those fans want more. Ree also
has an enormous following." Hearst Magazines next year also is
expected to launch a new magazine in partnership with Airbnb
Inc.
Write to Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg at
jeffrey.trachtenberg@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 08, 2016 00:14 ET (05:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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