Despite a down time for magazines overall, with ad pages declining 26% year over year in the first quarter, Food Network Magazine, which debuted in October 2008, sold 70% of its initial "test issue," which had a rate base (for advertising sale purposes) of 300,000 copies. That sales level was achieved in three weeks on the newsstands, Hearst said, citing multi-platform promotion behind the new magazine.

A second "test issue" came out in January, by which time the publishers had decided to produce six issues overall in 2009.