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?