Tiger Beat is an American teenfan magazine published by The Laufer Company and marketed primarily to adolescent girls. The magazine had a paper edition that was sold at stores until December 2018, and afterward was published exclusively online until 2021.
Tiger Beat was founded in September 1965[1][2] by Charles "Chuck" Laufer, his brother Ira Laufer, and television producer and host Lloyd Thaxton.[3] The magazine featured teen idolgossip and carried articles on movies, music and fashion.[4] Charles Laufer described the magazine's content as "guys in their 20s singing 'La La' songs to 13-year-old girls."[5]
A distinctive element of Tiger Beat was its covers, which featured cut-and-paste collaged photos – primarily head shots – of current teen idols. For the first twelve issues, Thaxton's face appeared at the top corner of the cover (at first the magazine was titled Lloyd Thaxton's Tiger Beat), and he also contributed a column.[6] After 2016, the magazine cover featured a single image of a celebrity.[7]
During the 1960s, The Laufer Company leveraged the teen market dominated by Tiger Beat with similar magazines, including FaVE and Monkee Spectacular.[8] In 1998, Tiger Beat was sold by publisher Sterling/MacFaddentoPrimedia, which in 2003 sold the magazine to Scott Laufer, the son of magazine founder Charles Laufer.[9] Until 2014, Laufer also produced the similar teen magazine Bop.[10][11] After 2015, Tiger Beat was published by Los Angeles–based Tiger Beat Media, Inc.[12][13]
