Magazine Death Pool

The Reaper is having fun, fun, fun til they take all the magazines away

The Reaper is going to have some added john reading soon. 

Today brought a boatload of bad news about magazines on both the advertising and circulation fronts, ironically on the day that Apple revealed its second generation iPhone.

Advertising pages dropped in the first half by 7.4%, with the second quarter being particularly devastating. According to Jack Hanrahan's CircMatters newsletter, a number of large magazines barely made their rate base.

It's getting a bit lonely down here and Golf For Women is just not going to hold my interest for long. The Reaper needs the extra supply of combustible paper because you know how high gas prices are going to be this winter.

Where do we start?

• US Weekly is 4.1% below its 2008 rate base, missing it in 11 out of 19 issues. That should get Jann Wenner to the negotiating table, if he's ever around from his lo-o-o-ong vacations. The publisher says they'll make the rate base for the first half of 2008, which can be possible with those deep Wenner pockets.
• In the state closest to Hell, New Jersey, Bauer Publishing is having a rough time at the newsstand with In Touch Weekly and Life & Style Weekly. Heck, they should just merge them into In Touch with Life & Style Weekly!
• Some of the Reaper's odds-on favorites continue to lose double digit ad pages: Entertainment Weekly (-16.8%), Kiplingers Personal Finance (-15.3%), US News & World Report (-30.3%), Home (-30.9%), and Scientific American (-20.3%). Entertainment Weekly Publisher Scott Donaton had better be doing something about those ad pages after Folio bestowed him as a "Director-Level Do-er" in its Folio 40 2008.
• With a 35.8% ad pages loss in this year's first half, PC Magazine has emerged as a leading candidate for the Reaper's prediction of a computer magazine going under this year.
• Even some of Advertising Age's and Mediaweek's pet magazines are taking big ad page hits: Lucky (-12.2%),  The New Yorker (-20.1%), and ESPN The Magazine (-14.8%).
• Speaking of Kiplingers and senior citizens, even poor old AARP Magazine took a 20.5% hit.
• Radar is still not audited by either ABC or PIB, so we'll have to take Maer Roshan's word that the ads are up 5%, right?

RIP: Golf for Women

Fore! Closed!

Golf For Women bogied today when its editor left, and instead of investing in another editor, decided to just shut the thing down.

Is it possible that Hearst mortally wounded one of Conde Nast's magazines by stealing its editor to take over O The Oprah Magazine? Or did they do them a favor?

The Reaper has a feeling that Conde Nast is actually breathing a sigh of relief, as Golf For Women was on life support anyway, and now they have a convenient excuse to close it.

The cover on the left is a typical Conde Nast "ready for the ad package" deal, touting its "Style Issue," but that clearly didn't work.

When people as the Reaper about my handicap, I'm usually not thinking about my next round at the Eternal Nothingness Golf Classic but the odds of Radar, US News & World Report, Blender, Sound & Vision, Kiplingers Personal Finance, Trader Monthly, Portfolio, and Nickelodeon magazines being around a year from now.

RIP: Quick & Simple

Quick and the Dead is more like it. Yes, a salute to Sam Raimi's overlooked Western with Sharon Stone and Toby MacGuire.

But it is better to get it over with quickly than a long, long, drawn-out death, right Kiplingers, Nickelodeon, Blender, Time, Newsweek, and US News & World Report?

The cover headline reads Live Better For Less. Just think, that this magazine ended it all right now for nothing!

Time ran out finally for Hearst's Wal-Mart-ized cross between Real Simple and Budget Living (RIP). It must have been that favor to fellow magazine icon Oprah to reveal the book that changed her life. Was it the Bible, by chance? Death Be Not Proud?

Ironic, says the Reaper, since the economy is in the stinkhole and readers could benefit from lots of tips on how to cut corners. But the problem is, dang it, that this magazine was one of those corners!

Doubly ironic since its first quarter ad pages were up 16.2%! What did Hearst know that others did not? Is this the first act of the returning Frank Bennack, who wanted to cut his own corners right away?

Today's Depressing Magazine News Link

FishbowlNY: "Tribe of Jewish Mags Shrinks: American Jewish Life Folds"

Future Snowboarding: RIP June 2008

Future Snowboarding has wiped out.

Unable to get snowboarders to actually stop and read their magazine, Future Publishing closed down this three-year-old title. There's just no action in action sports.

While it is admittedly difficult to find a slope to board on down here, and a Burton ski jacket would make me break out in a sweat, the Reaper is learning how to make his boat do a 360 in the water. I just have to be careful not to fall over and get my clothes wet.

For Your Consideration: Doubledown Media

1. The gravy train is over. The stock market is tanking worse than the buzz on M. Night Shyamalan's movie opening up this Friday, Bear Stearns was bought for a dime, and other brokerages like Lehman are teetering. Merrill Lynch is raising billions in capital to make up for shortfalls. The high rollers are being laid off in droves and, whoops, there goes the audience that Doubledown has counted on.

2. Lawsuits cost money. Doubledown Media rode the press coverage for about five minutes about publishing former Met Lenny Dykstra's custom magazine for former athletes. Then they fell out of love about shirking contractual responsibilties, pointed a lot of fingers, and counter-lawsuits were filed. Number one argument among couples is money! Dykstra took his bag of baseballs to American Express, and now both parties are filling up Keith Kelly's column with accusations.

3. Freelancers are not being paid.

Put it all together and the Reaper is seeing this stock being taken "off the Big Board." Something has to give, so watch for at least one of Doubledown's properties to be de-listed.

ODDS OF SURVIVAL: 25%

US News & World Report takes yet another step towards obsolescence

It's a bi-weekly. It's a fortnightly. It's a dead magazine walking.

It does not pay to be the number three magazine in any category these days.

US News & World Report was forced to blink and now will be publishing every other week while it focuses on the, cough, web.

Why wait for the inevitable? They should just scuttle the  magazine, change their name and become the JD Power of hospitals and colleges.

Time and Newsweek, you're next.

Today's Depressing Magazine News Link

Mediaweek: "Meredith Buys Big, Cuts 60"

Today's Depressing Magazine News Link

FOLIO: "RBI Slashes 41 Jobs" (that's Reed Business Information)

"We are open forever," says Radar's Maer Roshan

Those are words to live, uh, die by. The NY Observer has the latest soap opera that is Radar magazine, but the Reaper would like to add a couple of points of its own.

* Departing Radar president Fred Poust was hired to sell ads, because that was his background at Time Inc.

* If the magazine has enough money "to stay put for a year," what happens after that? If Radar is "open forever," it'll probably be as a web-only entity, which has been suggested by just about everybody since it started publishing again.

* It does not make a difference if Ana Marie Cox contributes or Bryan Burroughs jumps ship from Vanity Fair, as long as they keep putting their biggest stories on their web site. Why buy the magazine?

* There are "52" full-time employees at Radar? That is pretty enormous for a magazine that does not even have 200,000 circulation yet. Oh, I think they were also counting the maintenance staff in that number too.

* How many art directors does it take to design Radar? I've lost count. It's been redesigned more times than the faces of "The Real Housewives of NYC." Could you imagine working at a media buying agency and being presented a new Radar redesign every few issues?