Have you noticed your favorite magazine seems more like one of those thin mail-order catalogs lately? The long-discussed drop in magazine advertising brought on by advertiser unwillingness to pay for ads in the recession is best illustrated to me when I compared two copies of Entertainment Weekly (Weakly?). The first copy was the Nov. 24, 2006 issue that heralded the new James Bond, Daniel Craig. Total page count was 114, with 66 pages of articles and 48 full page ads, not counting partial pages advertisements.
This year I’ve noticed that the magazine felt alarmingly thin and the July 17, 2009 edition indicated it wasn’t my imagination. Total pages count was 64 with 56 editorial pages leaving only–wait for it–eight full page ads. There’s no more dramatic way to see how some magazines have taken a big and painful hit and don’t be surprised if familiar newsstand magazines disappear before the end of the year. Newsweek is attempting a radical re-invention of itself by going to a finer paper selection and revamping its structure away from the classic newsmagazine departments to a series of big idea articles and essays. I doubt this will work but maybe it will find a new readership less interested in actual news reporting and analysis than the big issues behind the headlines.
At the checkout line the other day, I noticed one apparent bright spot: Picking up the new People magazine, I noticed it had a similar density of full page ads to the older Entertainment Weekly and thus seems healthy. Apparently readers can do without print news magazines and entertainment items, but they must keep up with, Michael, Jon and Kate and all the other train-wrecks gossipdom–and advertisers want to be among those pages.
