Crains New York Demo - (Page 2)

COMMENTARY He changed the times SWEET PROJECT LATE BLOOMER: Eight years after the site was purchased, work has yet to begin. I nsane hair, jeans, white shirt, boots and black jacket: The image goes back to 1965, but could be that of a hipster in 2012.” So begins a story in the latest French Elle, declaring this a Bob Dylan Spring. Even granted his nearconstant touring in recent years (he’ll be in South America in April), it is an unusually busy season for both the Minnesota-bred singer, who turns 71 in American music broadly accessible and earning the moniker of hip-hop’s Elvis, was really its Dylan, doing his verbal trapeze act with the greatest of ease. But since then, vapid and formulaic pop, often pretty (Adele) but rarely profound (Amy Winehouse), has poured from radios, and when my wife complains about my Dylan, Stones and Dr. Dre-stuffed playlists and demands something new, I have two words for her: “Katy Perry?” Siriusly? Which brings me back to 1965, and why this Dylan moment may be cause for celebration as much as nostalgia. As nitpicking critics have long claimed, Dylan’s music was not always, strictly speaking, original. The singer who debuted 50 years ago was a take on the great folkie Woody Guthrie, but in the aftermath of the failure of Dylan’s first LP, he hosted a series of … let’s call them genetic mutations … that led to Dylan ’65 and l’explosion rock that followed. The petri dish for all this was New York City, in a moment when anything seemed possible. Nowadays, financiers, lawyers and entitled NYU students fill the Greenwich Village sidewalks Dylan once tramped and have crowded out the creators of that moment as surely as formula pop has trumped creativity on the charts. But the kids on the L train with their insane hair, boots and black jackets have kept the form alive. All it will take is one more mutation to make rebel music again. May, and his fans. Chimes of Freedom—a four-CD set of 50 covers of Dylan songs by a wildly eclectic group of performers (from the obvious, Patti Smith and Johnny Cash, to the odd, Miley Cyrus and Ke$ha), released to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of Amnesty International—is, as I write, No. 22 on the Amazon charts (and No. 1 in oldies). “Bob Dylan, L’Explosion Rock 6166,” an exhibit of Dylan photographs and memorabilia created by the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, opened a few days ago at the Cité de la Musique in Paris. And last week marked another golden anniversary, this one of the release of Dylan’s first eponymous LP, the kind of flop that today might send a career into the dustbin. There were no dustbins for Dylan,who had come to New York in 1961 with a burning ambition that kindled several musical revolutions.They culminated in the one celebrated in that exhibit title, when he famously went electric in 1965, melding folk music’s earnest eloquence with rock’s demanding cacophony, earning him both brickbats and the biggest hit in his career to date. “Like a Rolling Stone” hit No. 2 on the Billboard chart that summer. Only the Beatles’ “Help” topped it. A decade ago, despite the epic damage already being inflicted on the music business by the Internet, it was still possible to believe that music could change the world, or at least a slice of it. I remember thinking that Eminem, a white man making African- MICHAEL GROSS This Bob Dylan Spring is cause for celebration in New York buck ennis Red ink flows at Reader’s Digest Third CEO in the past year tries to stem losses at the storied magazine publisher BY MATTHEW FLAMM Leafing through the April Reader’s Digest, people may think for a moment they’ve stumbled on an old issue. The 90-year-old flagship of the Reader’s Digest Association has brought back “Laughter, the Best Medicine,” “Humor in Uniform” and other signature features that haven’t been seen in years. What shows no sign of returning, however, are the Reader’s Digest Association’s days as a profitable business. While the company has done a decent job of dusting off its namesake title, it has yet to update the way it does business or figure out how to wring profits from an operation that brings in about $1 billion less in revenue than it did eight years ago. Even with waves of layoffs and restructurings that followed a 2009 bankruptcy filing, the company has never gotten its costs in line. Reader’s Digest’s new chief executive says that’s what he plans to accomplish over the next couple of years. “Despite all the efforts to catch up on the cost structure, we never really have,” said Robert Guth, who is the third CEO since the company emerged from bankruptcy in February 2010. “It’s not a question of how much we have to cut, but in what way. It’s about taking what amounts to hundreds of IT platforms and winnowing them down to dozens.” Net losses for 2011 came to $393 million on revenue of $1.44 billion, which was down about 2% from the prior year, the company reported last week. The losses were driven by declines in its international directmarketing businesses and a $262 million write-down from earlier in the year, mostly of the company’s European assets. Its North American busi- GOOD NEWS: Advertising rebounds at flagship. ness remains fairly solid. Boosted by a partnership with health insurance giant Humana, advertising pages at Reader’s Digest spiked 17% in 2011, compared with the prior year, while ad revenue across the company rose 7%. Major changes This is an old story for Reader’s Digest, which was a direct-marketing powerhouse until its sweepstakes promotions led to legal troubles and were discontinued early in the last decade. See RED INK on Page 46 2 | Crain’s New York Business | March 26, 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crains New York Demo

Crains New York Demo
Contents
Sweet project in danger of a total meltdown
More red ink on the books at Reader’s Digest
Bank in the tank: Bad bet on rates sinks Hudson City
Neighborhood Journal
The Insider
Small Business
Viewpoint
Really dumb move, Upper West Side
Real Estate Deals
Classifieds
Business Lives
Hot Jobs
Executive Moves
The Week Ahead

Crains New York Demo