Bloomberg aims to improve BW content

Nat Ives of Advertising Age writes Tuesday about Bloomberg‘s plans for BusinessWeek, and talked to Norm Pearlstine and Bloomberg president Dan Doctoroff about what will happen to the business weekly.

Ives writes, “To energize and improve BusinessWeek’s editorial product, then, the new owners plan to increase the number of editorial pages in every issue, tapping Bloomberg’s 2,200 existing journalists.

“‘We think that given the global reach and assets available to us at Bloomberg, combined with BusinessWeek, we can just put out a great magazine,’ Mr. Pearlstine said in an interview Tuesday night. ‘If we do that, we will be rewarded with consumer demand and advertising will follow.’

“It’s not just advertising, though, in Bloomberg’s crosshairs. It’s also eyeing better circulation economics, a priority that too many magazine publishers have thrown overboard in the desperate hunt for ad dollars. ‘Right now the subscription price is $35 annually,’ Mr. Doctoroff said. ‘The Economist is $106. We’ve got to improve the product and make BusinessWeek a must-have.’

“That’s not to say Bloomberg will ignore the chance to sell ads across its newly combined products facing consumers. ‘The other opportunity exists online, where between the two sites, Bloomberg.com and BusinessWeek.com, we’ll have roughly 8 million uniques, which are more than any other non-portal business and financial site,’ Mr. Doctoroff said. ‘Interestingly they have virtually no overlap in terms of advertisers and relatively little overlap in terms of viewers. That is a big opportunity.'”

Read more here.