PMB -- the long view

There is some predictable confusion and mild handwringing about the 2007 Print Measurement Bureau results. The Globe and Mail, for instance, writes a story that says the figures reflect the impact of the internet, which may be true, but is nowhere backed up in the story. Mastheadonline (sub req'd) makes some interesting comparisons of traditional rivalries.

For some reason, a lot of concentration seems to be upon the "average" reader per copy figure (RPC), which has declined from 5.5 to 5.0 from since last year's study. This is despite the constantly changing mix of players in the PMB study. Like people watching smoke signals from the curia, industry watchers read quite a lot into year-to-year changes in total readership and RPC. (To be fair, this horse race mentality is driven by magazines' ability to cash in on this measured readership on their rate cards.)

But sometimes it is worth taking the long view. We looked at the 2002 PMB data (when the average RPC was virtually the same as it is now -- 5.1) and selected out those (both English and French language) with the highest RPC figures, a measure of their "efficiency" in delivering those precious pairs of eyeballs. Then we looked at the same titles in the 2007 results. And we put any change in audience and RPC figures in percentage terms.

	Aud %	RPC %
Outdoor Canada	-20.8	- 25.04
Gardening Life	-13.5	- 16.16
Le lundi	-28.7	37.52
Canadian Geographic	-4.3	- 1.57
Derniere Heure	-29.7	37.72
Renovation Bricolage	-11.2	- 6.13
Canadian Gardening	-20.0	- 23.42
Les idees de ma maison	4.5	- 14.92
Clin d'oeil	-4.3	- 20.18
Fashion	6.0	7.08
Average	-12.2	- 2.51

These selected, high-performing magazines have seen their total audiences shrink by just over 12% since 2002, and their RPC figures have declined by 2.5%.

Either by choice (not chasing after marginal, expensive readers) or by circumstance, Derniere Heure and Le Lundi have lost close to 30% of their audience, but their efficiency in delivering that audience has soared by almost 38%.

On the other hand, since 2002, Outdoor Canada and Canadian Gardening have each lost 20% of their audiences and seen their RPC figure decline by 25% and 23% respectively.

UPDATE: There are a lot of letters/comments to the Globe and Mail about the story on PMB. One writer corrected the Globe's misunderstanding that readership was calculated from reader-per-copy rather than the other way around. A lot of readers talked about the newspaper figures included in the PMB data. Some suggested that a reason why people are not reading is that there is too much advertising. Since all readers are subsidized by advertising (lest they pay $12 a copy for an issue) and most internet sites are subsidized by print advertising, there is a lot of confusion out there. Somehow, readers need to be disabused of the notion that anything is free, including online sites. They will either see their online sources cluttered with advertising (just like print) or they will have to subscribe (just like print) or they will have to pay the true cost of gathering and disseminating the information.