Press: In the Family

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For Gannett Co. Inc., the year has opened with a shopping spree. In January the Rosslyn, Va.-based media giant, which publishes 124 newspapers, including the national daily USA Today, announced it was buying the respected Des Moines Register (circ. 240,000) and three sister papers in Tennessee and Iowa for $200 million from the Des Moines Register & Tribune Co. Last week Gannett purchased the nation's fourth-largestcirculation periodical, Family Weekly (the leaders: Parade, 23 million; the Reader's Digest, 18 million; TV Guide, 17 million).

Family Weekly, which is inserted into the Sunday editions of 362 newspapers with a combined circulation of 12.8 million, was sold by CBS Inc. for a reported $30 million to $40 million, well below the $50 million CBS paid in 1980. Family Weekly has been suffering from a loss of advertising. Ad pages dropped from 814 in 1983 to 718 last year, while annual ad revenues declined from $102 million to an estimated $100 million. Its chief competitor, Parade, which appears in 135 papers, is also slumping. Advertising in that New house- owned insert fell from 754 pages to 636 pages, and ad revenues from $167 million to $156 million.

Gannett is undismayed by such declines. Said Chairman Allen Neuharth: "It is quite clear that weekend newspaper reading has had a stronger circulation pattern in the last several years." The chain already has forsworn one sure way of boosting the circulation of its newest addition. Although at least a score of Gannett newspapers now carry Parade, Neuharth said his company has no plans to force them to replace it with Family Weekly.