Pacific expands that’s life! ahead of launch of monthly publication

The publisher of New Idea magazine will launch its new monthly masthead, that’s life!, on January 21.

The new that's life launches on January 21

The publisher of New Idea and Better Homes & Gardens magazines will launch its new monthly masthead, that’s life!, on January 21, targeted at average Australian women.

Louisa Hatfield, general manager of entertainment and family at Pacific Magazines, told The Australian the new magazine would be bigger than the existing weekly magazine of the same name, which had been around for 25 years, and have many pages of real-life stories and puzzles. The weekly edition will continue to be published in the same format.

“The production qualities are higher (better paper, bigger format) and the editor, Linda Smith, and the team have worked hard to give it a different feel and tone,” Ms Hatfield said.

“But it is still about the three things our audience love so much, which is real-life stories — ordinary people doing extraordinary things — as well as puzzles (around 40,000 people a week enter our puzzles) and, of course, lifestyle.”

Pacific’s launch of the new monthly magazine was first ­reported by The Australian on Monday, with chief executive Gereurd Roberts talking up the prospects of its dozen mastheads, particularly across digital. Pacific’s other titles include WHO, marie claire, InStyle, Girlfriend, Australian Home Beautiful, Women’s Health and Men’s Health.

The magazine’s launch bucks the trend of a tough market for magazines, which, more than any medium, are feeling the pinch of readers moving to digital. It also comes a month after German media group Bauer published the last Australian edition of Cosmopolitan after 45 years. Cosmo, as it was known, joined a string of magazines, including Dolly, Grazia, Famous, Penthouse, Cleo, Yours and Men’s Style, on the scrapheap amid declining readership.

Ms Hatfield said the decision to launch a monthly edition was based on a proven business model, noting that “real-life titles have been doing this overseas in countries like the UK for quite some time”.

“Also, our audience has been demanding more. There is a real interest in crime and real-life stories at the moment — not just in print but on digital and in audio. The that’s life! podcast, How I Survived, is the most successful podcast at Pacific, for example, and we all know how successful The Teacher’s Pet has been.”

The Australian’s investigative podcast series, The Teacher’s Pet,looked into the 1982 disappearance of Sydney mother Lyn Dawson. The renewed media atten­tion resulted in Chris Dawson being charged last month.

Ms Hatfield said the target audience for the new magazine was “everyday Aussie women”.

“We call ourselves the magazine with heart, and that is very true of our audience. They are about family first, very community-spirited and highly responsive. Clients know our audience has the power to move stuff off shelves,” she said.

Pacific, which is owned by Seven West Media, would use a similar design for the monthly magazine as the weekly, “but the cover has a really different look and feel”, Ms Hatfield said.