Death by little nicks and cuts

I will have vengeance.
I will have salvation.
Who sir, you sir?
No one's in the chair. Come on! Come on!

2008 is nearly five months over and the magazine publishing industry is dying by little nicks and cuts.

Yes, the Reaper has been a depressing little sod in the past few months. I've had to watch "Final Destination 4" a few times to get my sense of humor back. Nobody is willing to pull the plug so far, but that will change.

With the Sex and The City movie opening up next week, let's take a look at the magazines which seem to getting skinnier and in trouble.

• TV Guide: You know your days are numbered when your new owners want to sell the magazine property while retaining the web domain. Why not just save yourself the trouble, close the magazine, and make it a strictly web property? The last poster boy reader of TV Guide was Archie Bunker.

• Time vs. Newsweek vs. US News & World Report: This is another race to the bottom. Rate bases being cut, staff being laid off, buyouts galore. My bet has always been on US News & World Report as the first to croak, about as non-essential a magazine as there could be, and its departure will disrupt dentists' offices everywhere. They should take their "Best Colleges" and similar franchises and put it behind a paid online curtain like Consumer Reports. Mort, sooner or later it's time to cut bait, move on and stick to buying and selling buildings.

• Entertainment Weekly: Somehow, new publisher Scott Donaton managed to get a Folio 40 Award for being some kind of "Director Level Do-er" when he had not even "doing much" having been on the job for four months. Now that he's been dubbed the Great Karnack of this troubled title, it's time to do something cosmic... like sell ads and somehow, make people buy the magazine on the newsstand. Ironically, the week Donaton got his Folio 40 Award, the Post questioned him about all-time low newsstand sales.

• Radar: Each issue seems to be a clone of other. Same small group of advertisers. Same Photoshop job. Same Tom Cruise and Scientology investigation. The only that hasn't changed are the art directors, who seem to come and go in the night. Did anybody notice?

• Details: Editor in chief Daniel Peres got married and now the magazine's as flabby as he is. It peaked about two or three years ago, won an art design award, and now it's out there encased with its same "str-ay" formula, like a bug frozen in ember. This one is not in trouble as others, but it needs a serious repaint job or it's going to fall apart.

• This Old House: Or as I like to call it, This Old Foreclosed House. House & Garden already went to that great flower pot in the sky. The category is in right in the hart of the economic storm. If the TV show and its ancillary products can't save it, well, who needs this antiquated paper product? If TOH somehow this survives, Home magazine is absolutely knocking on death's door and I am tempted to answer it.

• Blender: Perhaps the Quadrangle Group should have closed this one in addition to Stuff last year. The signs look bad. A number of small indie music rags have come to the end of their playlist this year, as we have noted. Blender's ad pages are down 25%, and it's not as if they were sky high before. Each issue is less than 100 pages. When the Reaper passes by The Blender Theater, it sees more authors speaking than bands playing. Anybody know about Blender's digital strategy? Don't know since the top digital person recently left after five months. They're betting the house on stripped down girls on Maxim.com instead. Kent Brownridge is going to have some 'splainin' to do to the fat cats who backed him on this one.

• Money vs. SmartMoney vs. Kiplinger's Personal Finance: As in the newsweekly category, the number three magazine looks like a surefire candidate for execution. Besides being one of the web's most popular and proliferating categories, the economy is going down the proverbial toilet bowl, so who has got the money to spend? Money can probably withstand the bumps because of a large digital strategy and it's too pervasive to croak. SmartMoney has a shot at immortality if Rupert Murdoch wants to keep his nose out of the magazine business.

• I'm sticking to my earlier forecast that one consumer computer magazine will be gone by year's end.

• Sporting News. If you are going by the Reaper's #3 in the Category Theory, this grand institution may be going the way of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Bought by a subsidiary of Advance Publications (the parent of Conde Nast), and recently moved to the new corporate HQ in Charlotte, Sporting News may have to return to tabloid form to make a buck. Even then, stat fanatics go online, not to newsstands.

• Boating, Motorboating, Cycle World, Yachting, Power & Motor Yacht: One category that has slipped under the radar but is definitely feeling the economy heat are these niche enthusiast titles. Just like investing in homes, when nobody is buying boats or cycles, the respective magazines get whacked.

• Nickelodeon: Here's the one network tie-in that worked for years (as opposed to Hearst's Lifetime debacle). Now when an advertiser wants to brainwash a kid to buy their cereal, they set up the virtual "Kelloggsland" or "Club Tooth Decay" on the web and skip the magazine. This is a magazine whose concept has come and definitely gone.

• CosmoGirl: "Teen Angel" will be this one's theme song... most likely to be hit by an oncoming freight train after getting stuck on a railroad track. Can you hear me?

Comments

[Aaarf]

So how do we explain the constant rise in circulation (newsstand and subs) for The Economist. Oh, I know, they actually publish an interesting magazine that people want to read. Newsweek, Time and US News are all down because editorially they suck.

And they invest in stupid newsstand programs, unlike The Economist. And they don't give away subscriber stuff that no one wants.

[junebee]

It won't be too soon for "This Old House". I worked for Time-Warner after a telemarketing firm force-fed TOH to hardware stores across the country. I don't think any mag was more hated as a result.