Wondertime magazine, Web site shutting down

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By Owen Boss

Staff Writer

NORTHAMPTON - Wondertime, a bimonthly parenting magazine published locally by the Disney Corp., stopped publication permanently on Thursday, according to several former employees and a message on a company answering machine.

The magazine, with a local office at 47 Pleasant St., is the third of four locally produced Disney magazines to go out of business since 2005 - despite recording more than $25 million in advertising sales in 2008, according to the Magazine Publishers of America's Web site.

Advertising Age reported on its Web site Thursday that Wondertime's Web site will also be discontinued.

Disney Publishing discontinued Disney Magazine in April 2005 and Disney Adventures in November 2007.

One former employee, who was hired when the office first opened in 2005 and asked to remain anonymous, attributed the magazine's downfall to its top-heavy management structure. He said Wondertime boasted a staff three times the size of magazines in its circulation range of 50,000.

Phone calls to the magazine Thursday were relayed to officials at Disney's corporate offices, who did not return calls by press time.

The former employee also offered the opinion that another factor leading to the demise of the publication was that Disney Publishing in New York viewed Wondertime as a very small part of its consumer products industry and that without producing surprisingly high revenues the magazine was destined to close.

Disney Publishing still produces Family Fun Magazine in Northampton, which had an estimated circulation of more than 2 million in 2008.

Leadership at Wondertime had changed hands this past October, when Alix Kennedy, a University of Massachusetts alumna who is now the executive director of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, left the role of editorial director to Amherst College alum Ann Hallock.

Both Hallock and Kennedy are Northampton residents and were credited with helping launch both Family Fun and Wondertime in 1991 and 2006; they previously worked together at New England Monthly, which ceased publication in 1990.

Although Wondertime recorded increases in advertising sales, circulation and pages printed between 2006 and 2008, the former employee said the magazine's inability to synchronize with Disney moneymakers such as movies and children's books also led to the discontinuance.

Wondertime recorded a little less than $24 million in total revenue for 2008 - representing a 59 percent increase from the $15 million recorded in 2007, according to the MPA.

Disney Publishing Worldwide publishes books and magazines in 85 languages in 75 countries, reaching more than 100 million readers each month, according to the company's Web site.

Owen Boss can be reached at oboss@gazettenet.com.