Canadian Home Workshop closed by Cottage Life Media, after 37 years of publication

The final cover

[This post has been updated] Canadian Home Workshop, the do-it-yourself magazine published by Cottage Life Media, is being discontinued after 37 years of publication. There has been no official announcement or press release,  but advertisers have been informed [see also letter to contributors, below]. The reason is apparently a long term decline of advertising support for the 85,500 paid circulation magazine. 

"After more than 37 years of publishing, it is with great regret that we announce the final edition of Canadian Home Workshop with our Winter 2013 issue," said a letter to advertisers, signed by editor Douglas Thomson and publisher and CEO Al Zikovitz. 

"Although Canadian Home Workshop has continued to attract a loyal audience of passionate readers, the ability to sustain a viable revenue model is not possible in today's fragmented media environment." 

Subscribers' remaining issues will be fulfilled by Family Handyman magazine, published by Reader's Digest Association Inc.

[letter to contributors a couple of weeks ago

You may have already heard the sad news, but we wanted to personally let you know that after 37 years, Canadian Home Workshop magazine will stop publishing this fall. The upcoming Winter issue will be our last. 

We can leave the explanations about what happened until another time (hopefully over a beer), but briefly… as you know, these are challenging times, especially for magazines. Although the digital world has created many opportunities and efficiencies for publishers, it has also created a very fractured advertising world, making it tough for a medium sized magazine like CHW to compete for advertising dollars. And without substantial advertising revenue, our current business model just didn't make sense to our management team. 

Exactly what will happen to the CHW brand in the future is unclear at this point. Many great ideas for some kind of evolution have been floated to our management and hopefully Cottage Life Media (and our parent Blue Ant Media) will find a way to keep it alive, likely in some kind of digital form. That said, there are currently no concrete plans for what that might look like. 

Although we have shared this news with you today, we're hoping you can keep it within your immediate circle until subscribers are presented with an offer to continue their subscriptions with another magazine of similar content. We expect subscribers to be contacted over the next few months. 

As sad as we feel about the magazines closure, Amy [McCleverty, art director] and I have really enjoyed working with you and all of the CHW contributors. I know that in the coming weeks and months we will miss our CHW family greatly. We also wanted to take this opportunity to extend our genuine thanks for sharing your creative passions with us. It's been an incredible amount of fun and we feel very proud of the magazines (and shows) we have produced together.]

Canadian Home Workshop and Outdoor Canada magazines were bought by Quarto Communications (now called Cottage Life Media) from Transcontinental Media in 2009. 
As part of a four-title deal, the two titles, along with Canadian Gardening and Canadian Home & Country, had been acquired by Transcon from Avid Media Inc. in 2004.