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thing. That's what the Post did--it changed its character completely at a certain point. What happens when you do that is that your audience doesn't come along with you. Now you may attract a new audience, but it will take you a long time to attract and build up a new audience equal in size to the audience you just left behind, that have forgotten you.

What was it like when you finally made the decision that the December 1972 issue was going to be the last one?

Terrible. Ghastly. You know, you finally have to say--you finally have to go to the board and say, “That's it.” Of course, the board was always asking, “What are you going to do?” They obviously didn't have any ideas as to what to do. What's a board going to do about running a magazine? But they would always ask you for figures and forecasts, and you had to give figures and forecasts. And we submitted all the alternatives that we had discussed, so on and so on. And finally--I forget what month it was--we went to the board--but I can check that out from the board minutes--went to the board and said, “Well, we see no way but to fold, and we propose to fold with the last issue in December, because the alternatives, in terms of 1973/4/5/6, are just too terrifying to contemplate, and you could wreck the rest of the company.”

Also, it was a terrible time because, actually, with the possible exception of Sports Illustrated, the entire magazine industry was in the dumps. And indeed, everybody was forecasting that the magazine industry was dead. Now, when you begin to say the