Of all the dot-com publishing franchises, Wired seemed the most likely to end up as road kill on a superhighway it helped create.
"Houghton Mifflin is one of the four great publishing franchises; I'd like to think that's how they'd keep it," Mr. Newcomb said.
But his debut novel, "The Hunt for Red October," launched one of the most lucrative publishing franchises in history and turned its author into a household name.
The story involves a ballet-centric drama consistent with other installments in the "Angelina" TV and publishing franchise.
The dispute, which has prompted threats of a lawsuit, illustrates the perils of building a publishing franchise around one person.
The fraying of the joint venture points up the dangers of a growing trend in the magazine business -- hitching a publishing franchise to a single person.
The tension between Ms. O'Donnell and Gruner & Jahr illustrates the perils of building an entire publishing franchise around a single person, particularly at a time Martha Stewart, the chairwoman of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, is in the news because of allegations of insider trading.
Gene Simmons Tongue magazine, a collaboration between Mr. Simmons, the Kiss star, and the Sterling/ McFadden Partnership, is the latest attempt to take an existing piece of cultural iconography -- in this instance, Mr. Simmons's most prominent feature -- and leverage it into a publishing franchise.
And then of course there's that little publishing franchise you may have heard of called "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus".
Midway, known for publishing videogame franchises like "NBA Jam," "Mortal Kombat" and "Gauntlet," didn't say why Zucker was fired, but it's clear that the company had generated no big hits and has been bleeding red ink for too long in an über-competitive business.
Murdoch created the first global media network by investing in both software (movies, TV shows, sports franchises, publishing) and the distribution platforms (the Fox network, cable, and TV satellite systems) that disseminate the software.
