The 2 Publishing Giants Were Regularly Bitter Rivals With Cond Titles Such As Style And Glamour Fighting It Out Against Hearst Titles Harper’s Bazaar And Sophisticated But They Were Forced To Cooperate In A Nationwide Distribution Partnership.

Agree with it or not, Canadian multi-millionaire Jim Pattison has taken over CoMag, the national mag distributor that was jointly owned by Cond Nast and Hearst.

Pattison, an 82-year old entrepreneur, made a single automobile showroom in the 1960s into a far-flung enterprise that today owns food store chains, radio stations, amusement parks, paper pulp mills, News Group, one of the biggest wholesale mag distributors in North America, and the Ripley’s Believe It or Not franchise.

The CoMag alliance was always a weird one.

The 2 publishing giants were often sour rivals with Cond titles such as Style and Glamour battling it out against Hearst titles Harper’s Bazaar and Sophisticated but they had to cooperate in a national distribution joint venture.

As well as the Hearst and Cond Nast titles, CoMag also handled outside clients such as Television Guide and Reader’s Digest. Up till 2 years ago, it also handled Us Weekly, but lost it to rival Time Warner Retail group owned by Time Inc.

The national distributors would advance money to publishers based primarily on how many copies were heading to wholesalers and shops and then it might make changes based mostly on how many copies were returned. They never actually physically took possession of the copies that task was left to wholesalers who owned warehouses that received mags from printers and then shipped them to outlets round the country.

“The entire outlet channel has been financially agitated for fifteen years,” declared John Harrington, editor of the New Single Copy, which tracks the industry. “This deal has more potential to align finances in a positive way than any development in recent years. It puts 2 levels of the industry under one umbrella.”

The biggest shock to the mag distribution world came in 2009 when one of its biggest wholesalers, Anderson Reports, went into Chapter 11.

“Overnight 25 percent of the retail market did not receive mags for two weeks,” said Harrington. “Sales shrunk, and then it was followed with the general fall-off in the market because of the recession.”

CoMag is at present losing money, sources related.

John Loughlin, an executive VP at Hearst recounted, “Our ultimate objective is : How can we sell more mags more effectively.”

He said that both Cond Nast and Hearst agreed to 10-plus year relationship with the news Group.

While the CoMag deal was being hammered out, Cond brass huddled at the company’s yearly publishers’ meeting in bright Palm Beach, Fla.

One of the keynote speakers at the three-day event was Blackstone Group Vice Chairman Byron Wien who displayed his “Ten Surprises for 2012.” Among his predictions : unemployment will drop to 8 p.c, the cost of oil will plunge and the economy will grow at a very healthy three p.c rate.

General Manager Chuck Townsend also distributed the Publisher of the Year award to Vogue’s Susan Plagemann, whose mag nosed out Conceit Fair and Wired to win outstanding business performer of the year.

In other respects, the business turn-around award went to Giulio Capua at Architectural Digest, the collaborative leadership award went to New Yorker Editor-in-Chief David Remnick and publisher Lisa Hughes. Gina Sanders, Chief Executive of the Fairchild Group, was knighted with the executive of the year award.

Quick vote

More than 60 staff of El Diario / La Prensa who are part of the Newspaper Guild unit will turn a thumbs down or up on a new contract today hardly twenty-four hours after they were given their first look at it.

The suggested contract, worked out between the union and the parent company, Impremedia, with the aid of an external mediator, is still calling for seventeen heads to be axed.

It’ll give as severance 2 and a half weeks pay for each year of service and bar further sackings for a year.

The deal comes as Impremedia continues negotiations to sell itself to the politically-connected Mitre family of Argentina, the powers behind La Nacion, the second biggest paper in Argentina.

“Everybody is ticked off,” recounted one insider. “Nobody understands the contract and they are not giving us any time to study it.”

The vote is set for 4:30 pm today.

Impremedia owners include the Lozano family, the founders of La Opinion, the organization’s Spanish language daily in L. A. , and personal equity firms Clearness Partners, Acon Capital, Halyard Ventures and the Brenner Group.

Monica Lozano, a great grand-daughter of La Opinion’s founder and the daughter of former envoy to Columbia, Ignacio Lozano, Jr, is the Manager while her bro, Jose, is the VP.

A spokesman for Impremedia made no comment on the pending contract and any sale talks, writes tagza.com.