Celebrity isn’t what is used to be

imgres-2As the magazine industry continues to suffer from declining circulation, celebrity gossip magazines and young women’s titles have taken some of the biggest hits, reports a recent item in the New York Times

“According to data released by the Alliance for Audited Media on Thursday morning, overall paid and verified circulation of magazines declined slightly by 0.3 percent in the second half of 2012. But newsstand sales – which are often viewed as the best barometer of how well a magazine is doing – dropped by 8.2 percent.

“These figures were far worse for celebrity magazines, which largely suffered double-digit declines. People’s newsstand sales dropped by 12.2 percent while US Weekly experienced a 14.6 percent decline. In Touch Weekly declined by 14.8 percent and Life & Style Weekly suffered a 19.1 percent drop on newsstands.

“Some young women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan and Glamour, which often attract an overlapping audience as celebrity magazines, also suffered major hits. Cosmopolitan had an 18.5 percent decline in newsstand sales while Glamour’s newsstand sales declined by 14.5 percent. John Harrington, an industry consultant, said that both categories are suffering because young women can access a lot of similar content online.

“’They’re fighting all the social media and information that’s just available in so many places,’ said Mr. Harrington about the kinds of pressures these magazines are under. ‘Some of the same factors are that their audience are people who are digitally adept and tend to go to social media.’ While all magazines reported a rise in digital subscribers and the number of average digital magazine copies more than doubled from the year before, these numbers still make up less than 2.4 percent of the entire magazine industry’s average circulation.”

 

For more, see: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/led-by-celebrity-titles-magazine-newsstand-sales-slide/

 

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