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I thought this was an interesting read. No mention of the fact that the magazines have become glorified catalogues of paid advertising with no critical faculty on the part of the editorial staff. Maybe it's not a reason for falling sales at all.
Magazine Circulation Falls in Half
Magazine Circulation Falls in Half
By
Irin Carmon
with contributions from
Stephanie D. Smith
Amy Wicks
Posted Friday August 08, 2008
Last Edited Friday August 08, 2008
From
WWD Issue 08/08/2008
The
phrase ?flat is the new up? became a mantra in recent years when it
came to assessing newsstand sales. Well, as core fashion titles,
women?s service books and men?s magazines have almost universally
posted declines in their single-copy sales in the first half of 2008,
how does ?less down is the new up? sound?
To wit, Hachette
Filipacchi Media?s Tom Masterson, senior vice president for consumer
marketing and manufacturing, pointed out that, while Elle?s newsstand
was down 6.3 percent in the first six months, ?many of Elle?s
competitors decreased more.?
That?s true ? Vogue was down
nearly 15 percent, though it still outsells Elle on the newsstand by an
average of about 50,000 copies monthly; Harper?s Bazaar fell 8.3
percent, and W, which gets the vast majority of sales through
subscription, was down 10 percent.
Or take Shape, which was
down about 10 percent overall on the newsstand in the first half, but
still averaged higher total sales than the troubled fitness category in
general. (Self had the dubious honor of being less down, but is still
smaller; Shape has beefed up its distribution at checkout and added
17,000 pockets nationwide.)
Growing market share might be
the last remaining competitive advantage in an environment where nearly
every editor in chief is seeing the kind of declines that once would
have gotten them fired. The long-standing expectation that a healthy
magazine is one that sees successive growth on the newsstand is in
question ? you can?t exactly fire everyone.
Whether the
change is cyclical (uncertain economic times that include high gas
prices, fewer supermarket trips and less disposable income) or secular
(consumer behavior is undergoing a fundamental change away from
newsstand, or from print magazines themselves) depends on whom you ask.
Editors and publishers would have it be the former.
?I don?t
think newsstand softness is systemic to magazines, but rather systemic
to the economy,? said O, The Oprah Magazine publisher Jill Seelig.
But some advertisers and observers are beginning to wonder whether the
second diagnosis is upon us. As consumers? attention fractures, spoiled
by choice and easy digital access, the culture and entertainment
industries already have adjusted their expectations, counting smaller
sales numbers than ever as blockbusters. The magazine industry might be
falling prey to the same tectonic shift.
Several magazines,
such as Glamour and Marie Claire, have seen disappointing sales for
several periods in a row, even when the economy was flush, suggesting
more of an overall move away from big women?s titles. (Perhaps in
reaction, Glamour unveiled a redesign this month.) Even newsstand
stalwart Cosmopolitan dropped 6 percent in this period, a difference of
more than 100,000 copies, after essentially flat newsstand sales since
2004.
The only source of growth across the board has been in total
circulation, which, given the newsstand declines, usually means that
publishers are spending more than ever to build and maintain their
subscriber bases. And advertisers are traditionally more skeptical of
that kind of audience-building, given publishers? past practices of
steeply discounting subscriptions.
That Men?s Vogue?s
newsstand is down 39.1 percent, for example, even as it?s raising its
rate base to 400,000, can be explained several ways: first, that it
suffers from an apples-and-oranges comparison between five issues
published in the first half of 2008 and three in the first half of
2007; second, and more significantly, that it?s growing its audience
the expensive way, through subscriptions, and not wowing on the
newsstand.
The title also has seen its verified
circulation (bulk copies in public places) drop by 14 percent since
last year. A spokeswoman said, ?Men?s Vogue continues to take risks on
covers to recognize accomplishment over celebrity.? Case in point: the
model-free Bugatti cover in May, which sold 45,000 copies, according to
Rapid Report. (That was still better than the worst cover to date,
April with Alex Rodriguez, at 41,000.)
As such, given the
flood of negative newsstand figures in the first half, the few examples
of uptick in sales should be particularly celebratory ? among them, In
Style, which, whether you consider it a core fashion title or a peer of
Glamour and Marie Claire, was the only one in either group to see any
rise in newsstand, by 4 percent to 783,254. That?s before the recently
unveiled redesign was even tested on the newsstand.
And
Rodale?s David Zinczenko showed once again that he can put his money
where his mouth is, maintaining Men?s Health?s position as the
number-one newsstand seller in the men?s category with a 2 percent
growth, and having a hand in two newer magazines, which also have seen
good news: Women?s Health, with its 12 percent rise, and Best Life, up
almost 20 percent. Maybe that?s why Men?s Health Living has been given
a go-ahead in a tough environment for shelter magazines.
So, do the steep declines serve as a harbinger of equally sharp falls
in advertising revenue as firms seek other media? Well, for now, media
buyers seem to be seeing the big picture. ?I don?t think we would have
seen these types of declines if the economy had been in a different
place,? said Robin Steinberg, senior vice president and director of
print investment and activation at MediaVest. ?We would have seen some
declines, but not deep declines.? That said, she added: ?The future of
magazines is not going to have the same distribution exposure as in
years past,? as the business model shifts from emphasizing the number
of eyeballs to assessing quality of audience.
And media
companies are experimenting with new distribution tools such as
Maghound, the so-called ?Netflix for magazines? launching in September.
A subsidiary of Time Inc., Maghound will allow consumers to switch in
and out titles for a flat monthly fee, and around 300 titles have
signed up so far.
Magazine publishers also are trying to
figure out how to leverage their Web sites to build a subscription base
? a potentially more efficient, or at least cheaper, way to add
subscribers than direct mail or verified circulation. Hearst magazines
in particular ? many of which tend to be big, single-copy-heavy titles
in an age of grim newsstand ? have suggested this as a winning
strategy. In the face of a newsstand decline of 17.3 percent, for
example, Oprah?s Seelig pointed to the fact that the magazine hasn?t
had to resort to verified circulation and that subscriptions were up 7
percent, in part because ?we played around with the subscription offers
on Oprah.com.?
She added, ?The simple truth is consumers
are not going to the places where our magazines are sold as frequently
as they were,? i.e., airports, supermarkets, drugstores and other
retailers.
That said, the magazine recently saw the exit of
editor in chief Amy Gross, billed as voluntary, and new editor of
former Golf for Women editor Susan Reed will have to figure out how and
if the newsstand can be turned around. George Janson, managing
partner/director of print at Mediaedge:cia, said, ?Some magazines have
reached a natural level of circulation,? pointing to Oprah in
particular.
?Magazines are also coming off a period where
[advertising] spending and circulation have, for the most part, been
flat to up,? added Janson ? meaning that what goes up sometimes has to
come down.
But if the latest newsstand numbers prove to be
long-term indicators, publishers could be faced with hard choices, such
as cutting rate bases or rethinking their distribution models. ?As
content becomes free on the Internet, I question whether or not the
future of magazines will be opt-in and nonpaid,? said Steinberg.
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