Taking the long view with PMB

Comparing the just-released (2005) Print Measurement Bureau readership data for English magazines with the years since the switch to Recent Reading provides some interesting items:

• The median readers-per-copy figure for all participating English magazines is 5.3. It was 5.7 in 2002, 5.9 in 2003.
  
• Toronto Life still has a respectably large audience, but since 2002 has seen total readership decline 8.8% and its reader-per-copy (RPC) figure decline from 10.1 to 9.4.
  
• Outdoor Canada retains its status as having the highest current RPC at 20.5 but its total readership since 2002 has slipped by 11.7%
  
• Fashion magazine has seen a steady growth; since 2002, readership has grown by 8.5% (largely because of its creation of Montreal and Vancouver editions). Its RPC has also gone up, from 11.5 in 2002 to 13 this year
  
• Flare, Fashion's fierce rival, has maintained 1.8 million readers but its RPC has increased only marginally, from 10.5 to 10.9
• Even while Today's Parent has increased its circulation by 9.1% between 2002 and now, its readership has declined by 13.8% during the same period
  
• Since 2002, TV Guide has lost more than a million readers (26%)
• Bouncing back from a disastrous redesign, Report on Business magazine has seen its readership increase by 95% in just two years. Its rival, National Post Business edged it in RPC, however (5.4 versus 5.0) this time around.
• As expected, based on only 1 year of results, Cottage Life has roared up as a front-runner, with total readership of 1.14 million and an RPC of 16.3.
• Perhaps not as expected, TORO (again, based on only 1 year of results) had a disastrous RPC of 0.9 -- meaning it prints 189,000 copies and gets only 172,000 readers. Even for a newspaper-distributed, controlled book, this is a real shocker.
  
• Maclean's has seen its total readership decline by 11.2% since 2002, though it maintains a solid 6.3 RPC.