After failures, publishers try youth.

This article focuses on the efforts of magazine publishers to target younger men in the U.S. as of April 1991. Conde Nast Publications Inc. is putting its support behind Details, which it remade into a young men's style magazine in the fall of 1990. Playboy Enterprises Inc. is exploring the launch of a U.S. edition of Max as a joint venture with Italian publisher Rizzoli. Straight Arrow Publishers delayed the planned launch of its as-yet-untitled men's magazine from fall 1991 to spring 1992 to create the right editorial formula. Looking to reach an even younger male, Lang Communications plans to launch Dirt, a male-oriented spinoff of its popular teenage girls' magazine Sassy. One reason for the sudden interest in young males: Some saw the failure of the new men's magazines as a sign that established titles such as Esquire, GQ and Playboy, along with more vertical buff books, had a virtual lock on aging baby-boom males. More important, most publishers exploring the men's field today say that launches in 1990 were poorly timed and poorly executed. Their failures do not indicate men do not want or need new products. The market for new magazines remains dreadful. Advertising continues to decline in general and spending in key categories for men's magazines, including tobacco, electronics, liquor and apparel, is down sharply. But even if they wait for the magazine industry's fortunes to turn around, the publishers of these latest men's books will have a hard time convincing advertisers their products fill a need.