About Susana

Susana

Susana was an Argentine monthly magazine for women, published in Buenos Aires from 2008 until its last issue in May 2018. It was directed by Susana Giménez, the biggest celebrity in Argentine television, whose name it bore and who appeared on every cover. Inspired by other international figures' publications, such as O, The Oprah Magazine by Oprah Winfrey and AR by Ana Rosa Quintana, the magazine included articles on women's issues, relationships, sex, health, careers, self-improvement and celebrities, as well as fashion and beauty, and many of its articles were about Giménez herself. It was first published by Grupo Q and was purchased by La Nación S.A. in 2011. Its recorded circulation was about 51,615 copies a month. For a decade it was the clearest Argentine example of the celebrity-masthead magazine, a title whose editor, brand and cover star were the same person.

Susana Giménez: The Star Behind the Magazine

No profile of Susana can begin anywhere but with its director. Susana Giménez, born in Buenos Aires on 29 January 1944, became a model at nineteen, made her name in a television commercial for Cadum soap, acted in over thirty films, including the cult film La Mary of 1974, and ten plays, and from 1987 hosted her eponymous television variety programme, one of the highest-rated and longest-running shows in Argentine television history, which entered the Guinness records for the volume of letters it received and won her the Golden Martín Fierro Award in 1997 and the INTE award for best Hispanic American television hostess in 2002. By 2008, when the magazine launched, her position was singular: she was not merely a presenter but a national institution, known to family, friends and fans alike as Su. A magazine called Susana therefore needed no explanation and no other brand. It sold its director's life, taste and world to the audience that had watched her for two decades, exactly as Oprah Winfrey's O had done in the United States, the model the magazine's chroniclers cite directly.

The Launch of 2008 at the Alvear Palace Hotel

Susana was first published in 2008, published initially by Grupo Q. Giménez presented her magazine in 2008 at the Alvear Palace Hotel in Buenos Aires, with guests including Mirtha Legrand, the other great institution of Argentine television; the actor Ricardo Darín; Mauricio Macri, then head of government of Buenos Aires and later president of Argentina; and the actor Guillermo Francella. The guest list was itself the magazine's manifesto: television royalty, cinema, politics and comedy in one room, certifying that the title stood at the centre of Argentine celebrity. The format followed from the launch. The magazine was monthly, in Spanish, addressed to women, and built around its namesake to a degree unusual even among celebrity titles: Giménez directed it, appeared on every cover without exception, and was the subject of many of its articles. Where a traditional women's magazine hides its editor, Susana was its editor, a structural fact that defined its appeal and, ultimately, its lifespan.

Grupo Q, Then La Nación: The Publishing History

Susana's corporate history had two chapters. From its 2008 launch it was published by Grupo Q. In 2011 it was purchased by La Nación S.A., the company of the great Buenos Aires newspaper La Nación, and thereafter published by La Nación, as the seed record for this profile states. The acquisition moved the title from a smaller group into one of Argentina's principal media houses, with the distribution, advertising sales and prestige that La Nación's magazine operation commanded. It also signalled the title's commercial standing three years after launch: celebrity magazines are typically short-lived novelties, and a purchase by a major house marked Susana as a durable property of the women's market. The magazine's website was revistasusana.com, and in 2012 the media firm that published it recognised Giménez herself as the biggest celebrity in Argentine television, the judgement of an industry describing its own asset. The title remained a La Nación publication until its end in 2018.

Content: Relationships, Health, Careers, Fashion and Celebrity

The magazine's contents, as documented in reference accounts, joined the classic departments of the modern women's magazine to the personal world of its director. It published articles on women's issues, relationships, sex, health, careers and self-improvement, together with fashion and beauty coverage and celebrity features, and many articles concerned Giménez herself: her life, her programme, her tastes and her opinions. That last element converted standard service journalism into something its readers could get nowhere else, a monthly letter from Su. The columnists documented for the magazine gave the mixture professional ballast: the sexologist Alessandra Rampolla wrote on sex and relationships; the radio and television host Maju Lozano contributed; the journalist Claudio María Domínguez wrote his characteristic inspirational material; and the director and producer Osvaldo Cattone was among its columnists. The combination, star intimacy plus named specialists plus service departments, replicated the proven architecture of O, The Oprah Magazine and Ana Rosa Quintana's AR, the international models cited for Susana from its launch.

Every Cover the Same Face: The Design of a Personality Brand

Susana's most famous design rule was absolute: Giménez appeared on every cover. Over a ten-year monthly run that meant well over a hundred covers of the same person, varied by styling, setting and season but never by subject. The rule inverted the economics of the newsstand. Other women's magazines bought attention with a rotating cast of models and stars; Susana's cover was a promise of continuity, the same beloved face the reader saw on television, in a market where Giménez's programme was a weekly ritual for millions. The covers also made the magazine instantly archivable as a portrait series: a decade of Argentine fashion, photography and celebrity styling recorded through a single sitter. Branding of this total kind is rare in magazine history because it binds the title's fate completely to one person's popularity, health and wishes. In Susana's case that binding was the point. The magazine was never designed to outlive its namesake's involvement, and its history, launch, sale and closure all followed her career rather than the calculations of a publisher's portfolio.

Circulation: About 51,615 Copies a Month

The recorded circulation of Susana was 51,615 copies a month, the figure carried in reference accounts of the magazine. In the Argentine market of the 2010s, shrunken from the mass circulations of the twentieth century and pressured by digital media, a monthly women's title selling above fifty thousand copies held a respectable commercial position, sustained by newsstand sales and by the promotional engine of its director's television programme, which could present each issue to a mass audience at no media cost. That cross-promotion was the celebrity magazine's decisive advantage: where rival titles bought advertising, Susana was itself advertised weekly by the most-watched entertainment programme in the country. The figure of 51,615 should be read as the recorded circulation in the magazine's reference entries rather than as an audited series across all ten years, for which no year-by-year data is available in the sources consulted; this profile invents no trend. What the figure establishes is scale: a personality monthly of genuine national reach, not a vanity pamphlet.

The Women's Market of the 2000s and 2010s

Susana entered a women's magazine market transformed from its twentieth-century form. The great weeklies of the Korn and Abril eras were gone or diminished; Para Ti survived as the heritage title of the sector; and the modern competition for the female reader included international licences, television-driven titles and, increasingly, websites and social media that delivered celebrity and service content daily and free. In that environment the personality magazine was a rational product: it converted an existing television audience into print buyers by offering what television could not, portability, permanence and intimacy at leisure. Susana's decade, 2008 to 2018, covered the last years in which a print monthly could still perform that conversion at fifty thousand copies. Its rivals for the cover-driven women's buyer included the other celebrity and general-interest titles of the Buenos Aires kiosk, but none could replicate its central asset. There was only one Susana Giménez, and her magazine's moat was her name on the masthead and her face on the cover of every issue for ten years.

The Final Issue of May 2018

The last issue of Susana was published in May 2018. Reference accounts record the date without drama, and the sources consulted for this profile do not document a single announced cause; this profile therefore does not invent one, whether commercial, personal or strategic. The closure can be placed in its contexts without speculation. Print magazine economics in Argentina in the late 2010s were severe, with falling advertising, rising costs and audiences migrating to digital platforms. Giménez's own career was entering a phase of reduced television presence, with her programme appearing in special and seasonal formats rather than as the weekly engine it had been. And a magazine so completely identified with one person, by design, had no succession: there was no second Susana to hand the title to. Its end in May 2018 thus closed a complete arc, launch, purchase by La Nación, a decade of monthly publication, final issue, that reads less as a failure than as a finished project, exactly coextensive with its director's design for it.

Susana Among the Celebrity Magazines

Internationally, Susana belonged to a small and telling category: the magazine as a star's second medium. Its cited models were O, The Oprah Magazine, founded in the United States in 2000 around Oprah Winfrey's television authority, and AR, the magazine of the Spanish presenter Ana Rosa Quintana. The formula's logic was constant across markets: a host trusted by millions of women converts that trust into a print object carrying advice, inspiration, consumption and confession in the star's voice. Argentina's version was distinguished by the completeness of the identification: director, name, cover and much of the content were one person. The category itself has largely dissolved into social media, where stars now publish daily to their own followers; Susana, launched in 2008, caught the last decade in which the monthly magazine was still the natural vessel for that relationship. As such it is a document of a media transition, the bridge between the television diva of the twentieth century and the influencer economy that followed.

Legacy

Susana's legacy is the definitive Argentine case of the celebrity-masthead magazine. Launched in Buenos Aires in 2008 by Grupo Q, presented at the Alvear Palace Hotel before the elite of Argentine entertainment, bought by La Nación in 2011, and published monthly until May 2018, it sold about 51,615 copies a month on the strength of a single proposition: Susana Giménez herself, on every cover, in every issue, directing a women's magazine of relationships, health, careers, fashion and celebrity for the audience that had loved her on television since 1987. Its columnists, Alessandra Rampolla, Maju Lozano, Claudio María Domínguez and Osvaldo Cattone among them, gave the proposition professional substance. For the WorldNM directory, Susana is recorded as a closed Buenos Aires monthly women's magazine, published 2008 to 2018 by Grupo Q and then La Nación. In the long line of Argentine women's titles from Para Ti and Claudia to the digital present, it marks the moment the star became the magazine.