The July – September magazine audit results will give the folks at Pacific Magazines encouragement and the folks at Bauer Media reason to reconsider their discount packs. In key head to head competition, Pacific won out on key fronts:
- New Idea sales declined 2.20% while Woman’s Day sales declined 5.90%.
- That’s Life sales declined 4.00% while Take 5 sales declined 4.90%.
- Famous sales declined 18.9% while NW sales declined 18.03%.
- OK! sales declined 4.10% while WHO sales declined 11.70%
There is a fundamental problem with the Famous / NW type of title and unless the publishers urgently recast these titles for today’s marketplace, there must be a doubt about their future. The same is true for Zoo Weekly which suffered a decline of 27.90%.
On the Pacific vs. Bauer competition, the results are all the more interesting when you consider that Bauer does considerably more discounting than Pacific.
We must expect magazine closures with these circulation declines and an accompanying decline in ad pages.
As my newsagency sales benchmark results will show next week, there is good news in magazine sales with some newsagents achieving growth. Smart publishers will want to find out more about how they are doing it. The gap between success and failure is widening.
Read more at Mumbrella.
People are bored of reading the same old stories, Lleyton and Bec pregnant then breaking up! This is why they are declining.
The days of bored housewives buying these magazines has gone. Women are more empowered now and that is why mags like Frankie and Yen etc are doing well. The sooner mags like NI and WD change the less the chance they will disappear forever.
Cris you can see publishers trying new things. Pacific has made significant changes to That’s Life over the last month with a reenergised approach to real life stories. Not sure if the changes are enough but it shows them as engaged.
Content is the key to their success – not discounting.