Consumer Mags Struggle Online And Post Worsening Newstand Sales
This story was written by David Kaplan.
With digital revenues still barely making up 10 percent of total revs, when it comes to magazine publishers, the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations provide only more bad tidings for the print side. As Portfolio's Jeff Bercovici breaks down ABC's latest FAS-FAX report (sub. req.) newsstand sales fell 11.1 percent in the last six months of '08 to roughly 43 million units.
Meanwhile, paid subscriptions grew a meager .53 percent. Total circulation was down .86 percent industry-wide in H208. One of the biggest drops among the top 25 largest mags was Reader's Digest, which dropped 12.38 percent. Washington Post Co (NYSE: WPO). title Newsweek did even worse, as paid circulation plunged 13.10 percent compared to the same period the year before. In terms of digital figures, while many magazines have some premium content behind a pay wall, FAS-FAX does not break out online subscriptions, although it does include those amounts as part of the full results.
By David Kaplan