Despite the digital hype, magazine maths can add up

The cover story would suggest it was a dismal half year for consumer magazines: Heat and Closer, Emap’s two star launches, were both down 7 per cent in circulation, raising quesions about whether the celebrity market has hit a limit.

The rout in lads’ mags continues: the upmarket GQ, from Condé Nast, overtook IPC’s Loaded for the first time. Loaded fell 25.9 per cent, and all the popular men’s monthlies and weeklies suffered steep falls.

Yet publishers are more optimistic. They do not see a mass migration of readers and advertisers from print to digital, except in the men’s market.

They believe that the weakness so many titles are experiencing is more down to hyper-competitiveness than any emerging structural problem in what has remained the most stable media sector in the country.

“I don’t think digital will move the dial significantly,” said Kevin Hand, the former Emap chief executive, who now runs Hachette-Filippachi in the UK.

“Magazines are not the same as newspapers; readers don’t expect or want to find new information all the time. To succeed with a website you have to provide a service to readers.”

He points to Emap’s Closerdiets as an example of what might work.

Emap, of course, appeared to hint at serious problems in the magazine market when it disclosed that it had been hit by a 13 per cent decline in advertising in the second quarter.

Soon after, it admitted that it might be willing to sell its consumer magazine business. But the problems seem to be company-specific, reflecting Emap’s particular dependence on suffering lads’ mags.

Duncan Edwards, chief executive of NatMags, estimates that advertising at his portfolio of titles, ranging from Cosmopolitan to Esquire, is flat this year.

Helped by the growth of the serious women’s monthly Psychologies, the Lagardère-owned Hachette is ahead by 10 per cent this year.

There is little evidence of structural decline, as digital makes a limited impact. Mr Edwards said: “Digital is about 5 per cent of revenues at the moment, and we can see it growing to 10 per cent in the next two or three years, but that’s it for the moment.”

It helps, perhaps, that NatMags’ portfolio is biased towards the luxury market, where advertising and readership remains strong.

But look at the men’s sector, and the argument looks potentially naive. Emap’s FHMmonthly, the leader, is down 16.1 per cent at 311,590, and its weekly Zoo is 8.7 per cent off at 186,732.

Marcus Rich, the Emap executive who runs the magazine business, said: “The men’s market, at 2.5 million copies a week is still larger than when the weekly titles launched.”

Yet, Dennis Publishing’s electronic e-mail magazine Monkey gained 17 per cent to 245,504 in the collapsing market, where otherwise only the upmarket GQ and Esquire gained.

Emap, though, also suffered because it has been light on launches. IPC, its arch rival, introduced Look, the high-street fashion weekly, at a creditable 318,907 after spending £18 million on its launch.

Without Look, the women’s lifestyle/fashion market would be off 5 per cent, but factor in the launch and readership rose 0.6 per cent – which represents what’s really going on.

Simon Kippin, publisher of Glamour, Condé Nast’s market-leading monthly, has to concede his title is down 7.5 per cent, but said: “We’re an established brand, and increases and decreases happen.”

Yet Glamour’s 544,653 circulation is far above IPC’s InStyle, also launched six years ago, but now selling 178,699. Despite all the hype about digital, the right product will sell and continue to sell if managed correctly in 2007.

The Times
August 20, 2007