Columnist sees the U.S. magazine industry smaller, dominated by Big 4 and women-focussed

Audience Development columnist Baird Davis (a senior consultant with Circulation Specialists) has compiled data showing how U.S. consumer magazine benchmarks -- circulation, newsstand sales and advertising sales -- aligned in 2009, and the picture was not pretty. (Of course the results don't necessarily reflect Canadian experience.) He calculated that...

• Circulation of audited consumer magazines declined 22% from 2000 to 2009
• Newsstand revenue is off about 16%
• Advertising sales declined by just over 20% in the past two years

"The simultaneous convergence of the three major bellwether indicators, along with signs of a modest advertising recovery in 2010, flattening newsstand sales and the success of a major new publication (Food Network), provide persuasive evidence that the consumer magazine industry is no longer searching for the bottom. The industry appears to have weighed anchor on a smaller business—whose parameters are 20-25 percent smaller—but one that’s ironically, perhaps, more vibrant than the bloated environment they have vacated.

"As a result of its bruising descent the industry is battle scarred and less arrogant. But it’s also leaner, wiser, a more effective consumer and audience development marketer, less advertising-centric and better prepared to cope with the demands of new media and the startling advances in technology."

One of the things he points out is that the business climate is increasingly unfriendly for smaller publishers who are being squeezed by such things as postal rate increases, fulfillment costs, newsstand distribution and the cost of print and paper. 

His prediction?

"The consumer magazine business of the future will be; smaller, more “Big 4” dominant, increasingly women focused, less kind to smaller publishers, multimedia sensitive and more consumer oriented."