Last week, the Houston Chronicle’s 29-95 became the newest addition to the city of Houston’s ever-growing number of entertainment publications. Named for the latitude and longitude of our very own city, 29-95 is led by Chronicle writers who previously wrote for the Chronicle’s Star section.
For years, in-the-know Houstonians along with those who just happen to be looking for something to do over the weekend have turned to the Houston Press for information regarding arts, entertainment and music, especially local events.
And a lot of young readers get their news primarily from the Internet, so shouldn’t all entertainment news have migrated to the Internet by now? In the age of Internet-savvy college students reading about entertainment, it would seem a no-brainer for them to simply read and research online, but print ads pay much more than online ads, so the revenue stream is still entrenched in print.
But 29-95 was launched in an interesting way, because visitors to the website cannot easily tell that it is affiliated with the Chronicle. And the site has a lot of sexually-related content that didn’t show up in the first print issue (and probably won’t in the future either).
Perhaps this is why 29-95 was marketed in such a way, but that’s pure speculation on our part.
“By adding another Internet-based weekly publication, the public will become more informed and the overall quality of all the publications [in Houston] will increase because now they have something to compete against,” says Jack Wehman, a former writer and intern for the Chronicle’s Star section.
29-95 is almost all listings, music and food writing, which are the bread and butter of traditional weekly papers, both for readers and advertisers. In the same way that the Internet picked off the most profitable parts of traditional newspapers — movie listings, classified ads, etc. — the Chronicle is taking aim at a piece of alt-weeklies’ business.
The Chronicle is probably trying to use its web credibility to attract people to the print product, because print ads pay better than online ads.
And the paper, if nothing else, will serve as another outlet for local artists, which is never a bad thing.
“Hopefully, young and older Houstonians will have a better grasp of everything there is to do in the city,” Wehman says. “Which will lead to more people supporting the local music and art scenes.”
Probably need to drill down much deeper to find their target market.
The upscale Bartles & Jaymes wine market might be a start since they started out as a Gallo brand and learned quickly that absolutely nobody in an upscale market wanted to buy Wine Coolers from Gallo.
Bartles & James is owned by Gallo.
The model used by GAP, OLD NAVY and the BANANA REPUBLIC is another possibility since they are all the same company using different brand names.
Given the fact that the H/R departments in many corporations will not allow publications of the premises with sexually explicit ads, I'll wager young corporate employees are the target market. Especially women who chat during the day about fun places to go and fun places to eat.