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[end of side two of tape one; beginning of side one, tape two]

Today is the 27th of January, 1986. We're in New York City.

This is Jessica Holland with Andrew Heiskell. Go ahead.

Bernie Aiser [?] dreamt up an idea of trying to put out four special interest magazines, with maybe circulations of 200,000 to 250,000, but with a joint administration, joint promotion, joint circulation staffs, so as to get the advantage of volume, namely, you'd have a million circulation, but have only one--mainly one staff. You'd have separate editorial staffs. Three or four magazines: Money, Wealth[?], something to do with movies, and one other. And we tested all those, and the only one that tested at all well was Money, as I remember. Yes.

And so, after a couple of years, we started Money--falteringly. We put together all the mistakes we've learned about in thirty years, and applied them all to the launch of Money. [laughter]

[laughs] Give some examples.

Well, the letters that went to potential subscribers described the magazine, which, in fact, the subscribers weren't even going to receive, because the magazine was going to be completely different from the promotion pieces. I don't know. It was incredible. It was a miserable launch. This was the only end result of a couple of years experimentation.

I was rather depressed by this, because we were trying to boost our own morale, and prove magazines, you know, did have a future.