Tiger Beat was founded in September 1965 by Charles "Chuck" Laufer, his brother Ira Laufer, and television producer and host
Lloyd Thaxton. The magazine featured
teen idol gossip and carried articles on
films,
music and
fashion. Charles Laufer described the magazine's content as "guys in their 20s singing 'La La' songs to 13-year-old girls." 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. After 2016, the magazine cover featured a single image of a celebrity. During the 1960s, The Laufer Company leveraged the
teen market dominated by
Tiger Beat with similar magazines, including
FaVE and
Monkee Spectacular. In 1998,
Tiger Beat was sold by publisher
Sterling/MacFadden to Primedia (now
Rent Group), which in 2003 sold the magazine to Scott Laufer, the son of magazine founder Charles Laufer. Until 2014, Laufer also produced the similar teen magazine
Bop. After 2015,
Tiger Beat was published by
Los Angeles–based Tiger Beat Media, Inc. ==In popular culture==