After finding absolutely no success with its Sports Illustrated for Kids and Sports Illustrated for Women editions, AOL/Time Warner, publisher of ‘SI,' has unveiled plans to reach out to the only audience that would possibly read its drivel: the mentally retarded.
Called "Sports Illustrated for Retards," the publication will be designed for those who have never read a magazine in their lives. A Marlboro ad will grace its front cover, with the back featuring a picture related to a givdn week's leading story. In addition, the pages will be glossy and saliva proof, ensuring that any simpleton can manage to flip through more than one page without destroying the magazine.
However, with regard to content, it's clear that there really is little point for any mentally well person to read the mag. Sports Illustrated for Retards will be a plethora of Steve Rushin and Rick Reilly articles mixed with Letters to the Editor and stories culled from issues dating as far back as 1958. By using such an assortment of juvenile content, the magazine's publishers hope to capitalize on the fact that their audience will have little or no concept of time, and most readers won't know Joe Namath from Richard Simmons.
Publishing insiders believe the new SI edition will harm sales of the regular SI. "The people they've got reading SI are more or less the same people who will be reading Sports Illustrated for Retards," explains one Triangle Press publisher speaking on the condition of anonymity. "You're going to have a bunch of readers jumping from one sinking ship to another."
On a side note, the publishers of ESPN The Magazine, upon hearing of the SI plans, instinctively released their own sketches for a magazine, to be called SFEN the Magazine, which is said to be aimed at "Swedish clerics with pedophile tendencies trapped in underground mines."
|
|
|
Email this story to a friend
