The New Tiger Beat Is Brought to You By Nick Cannon and The Daily Mail

Though the days of media companies creating actual print publications devoted to breathlessly excited content about teen stars seem like they should be over, Tiger Beat swears that the beat will go on for their pre-teen and teen celebrity gossip magazine, 50 years after it first launched.

As reported by the New York Times, a new team of people have banded together to save Tiger Beat from its seemingly inevitable extinction. Those people include Nick Cannon, Kevin Durant, and the team of cyborgs that produces The Daily Mail.

A group of 17 investors recently raised $2 million to buy and revamp the magazine, giving new life to a publication that had lost much of its sheen. The goal: turn the glossy magazine into a media empire.

Tiger Beat’s new backers include the banker and entrepreneur Mark Patricof; the television host and comedian Nick Cannon; the basketball star Kevin Durant; Steve Tisch, a film producer and the chairman and executive vice president of the New York Giants; and The Daily Mail.

“It’s a great investment,” Jon Steinberg, the chief executive of Daily Mail North America, said in an interview. “This is not a vanity investment.”

It’s important to note that Jon Steinberg formerly worked at BuzzFeed, and that the Daily Mail’s investment in Tiger Beat is clearly part of a larger move into Youth Content for the company, as they recently purchased the trash heap that is Elite Daily.

They have their work cut out for them; Tiger Beat’s website is still bopandtigerbeat.com, a depressing recollection of publisher Laufer Media’s other teen publication Bop, which folded last year.

But the “new” magazine is being promoted on Twitter using the hashtag #tigerbeatreturns, and they’ve also roped in the support of teen Snapchat stars. It doesn’t look like it will be a grave stylistic departure from the manic visuals favored by the teen mags of old, as you can see from the September issue up top on the left, which is out Tuesday. (The image on the right is of Tiger Beat’s first issue, released in September 1965.)

No, it sounds like Tiger Beat’s future will involve beefing up their web presence to hit teens of the BuzzFeed list persuasion, as well as developing concerts and a radio presence ($$$), where we can assume everyone from Disney stars to 5SOS members will be welcome. Content-wise, they’ll probably continue to produce positive posts geared towards teenage girls, as outlined in Laufer’s January 2014 media kit, in which the company said their readership was 98% female:

BOP & Tiger Beat are two different magazines with a similar goal: To provide today’s teens and tweens a one-stop source of celebrity news and gossip, exclusive interviews and photos, quizzes, contests and so much more.

…

BOP & Tiger Beat are the magazines readers can trust for honest reporting, positivity, fun and a scandal-free environment that even parents can appreciate.