A
Quantitative Analysis of
A Ten-Year Longitudinal Study of Transformation
By
David
Abrahamson
d-abrahamson@northwestern.edu
Rebecca Lynn Bowman
Mark Richard Greer
William Brian Yeado
Northwestern University
Abstract
Magazines are both economically driven business enterprises and
culturally fueled vehicles of social mediation. Periodicals serve as cultural
markers, reflective of the social reality in which they are produced, but are
also economic entities, inherently subjected to their industry’s traditional
business parameters. Hence, it is possible to examine changes within the
magazine market as a whole for aspects that may illuminate a number of the
prevailing sociocultural dimensions of
contemporary
Viewed quantitatively over a substantial period of time, it is clear
that a number of defining magazine business parameters (e.g., levels of
circulation, cover prices, advertising page rates, cpms)
have played important determinants in shaping the U.S. consumer magazine
industry. By studying the periodical industry’s aggregate reaction -- cost
management and the optimization of revenue within market conditions -- to
these economic pressures, one may not only try to understand how the industry
has responded to market changes, but also find clues to the ways in which
magazines mirror the sociocultural reality of
their times.
Literature Review
The
scholarly literature on the more specific considerations related to the
economic aspects of the magazine industry is not as rich as one might imagine,
but a number of authors have illuminated a variety of essential details.
Krishnan and Soley, Fletcher and Winn, and Malin
have focused on the considerations concerning circulation and advertising
readership and cycles, while Sumner, Norris, and Soley
and Krishnan have investigated the role of revenue sources in the viability of
magazines.4 The subject of gender as a factor in magazine
readership and marketing has also been examined. Canape
and Chung have studied aspects of male readership, while Damon-Moore and
Waller have, from a historical perspective, explored the circumstances related
to female readership.5
A
review of the literature, however, reveals surprisingly little quantitative
analysis of consumer magazine industry as a whole; hence this effort to build
on the previous baseline study (Abrahamson, 1991) one decade later.6
Information on
An nth-name sort (n=7) of the 2000 SRDS directory's index of
Where possible, measures of the significance and strength of all
relationships were calculated. Hence, words such as "significant" or
"strong" are used in the text to describe characteristics of all
consumer magazines only when their use is supported by the results of
statistical tests reported in footnotes. Relationships between nominal
variables were tested using non-parametric tests such as
For interval
variables, the number of cases and measures of central tendency (mean or
median) and of dispersion (standard deviation, referred to as "s.d.")
are provided in the text, figures, or footnotes. The statistical significance
of differences between means was tested using the T-test and/or an analysis of
variance (ANOVA), and the strength of relationships was measured by Eta
Squared (E2). When assumptions required by parametric tests could not be made,
the appropriate non-parametric test was used to evaluate differences in
central tendency and dispersion, e.g. Mann-Whitney (M-W) and Kolgormorov-Smirnov
(K-S) as alternatives to the t-test, and Kruskal-Wallis
(K-W) instead of ANOVA. In all cases, probabilities are reported in footnotes
as described above.
The
Role of Gender
It has long been accepted that, unlike newspapers, a large number of
the consumer magazines published in the
Two factors may explain the prevalence of this delineation by gender.
The first, a sociocultural one, suggests that the
editorial subjects covered by most conventional magazines are often of
predominant interest to only one gender. As evidence -- but at the risk of
stereotyping -- one might offer the example of males and hunting, or of women
and needlecrafts. The second factor hinges on the fact that many products and
services sold in the
Over the last 15 years or so, the role of gender in both the editorial
positioning and advertising prospects of magazines has begun to be the object
of some scholarly attention. Much ground-breaking historical research on the
issue of gender in magazine readership has been the work of journalism
historians, but their principal focus has been on nineteenth-century
developments.10 There was, however, an empirical benchmark study
completed just over a decade ago that explored the causal relationships
between the gender of audience and a number of quantitative measures
applicable to magazine publishing, e.g. circulation size, frequency of
publication, cover price, and price charged for advertising.11
Of particular interest was the possibility of exploring to what degree
a number of defining generalizations about the magazine publishing industry
have continued to hold true over the last decade. These primarily include the
specific business decisions (e.g. levels of circulation, cover price,
advertising rates, etc.) with which the magazine industry has responded to a
variety of economic pressures and the ways in which those pressures may cause
magazines to continue to reflect the on-going sociocultural
fractionization of American society.
For example, furthering a process that began with the rise of the
special-interest magazine in the 1960s, magazines in the 1990s continued to
remain highly "niched" and specialized
around myriad specific leisure activities. With more available leisure time,
the magazine-reading American public's interests proceeded to splinter and
fractionate, leading the magazine industry to create a magazine, or at least a
persona, to satiate all individual tastes. Magazines continued to reflect
subtle differences among themselves while speaking to different readers with
different leisure-time pursuits. The rise in not only the number of U.S.
magazine readers, but also the number of magazines launched during the decade,
is a testament to the eclectic and highly refined tastes among the leisure
pursuits of a -- by and large -- economically successful populace.
Approximately 14,000 different periodicals of all types are published in
the United States. More than 2,000 of these can be considered consumer
magazines,12 and these represent an estimated total circulation of
more than 585 million readers.13 In terms of individual
circulations, consumer magazines range in size from Parade (at 37
million, the largest circulation periodical but, as a Sunday newspaper
supplement, sometimes not included in a consideration of conventional
magazines) and Modern Maturity, the American Association of Retired
Person's monthly (at 20 million), to small specialized publications with only
a few hundred readers.
Interestingly, the mean circulation of all American consumer magazines
has fallen from 442,851 in 1990 to 278,105 in 2000. Equally fascinating,
however, is that due to continuing success of a large number of magazines with
quite small readerships, the median circulation of U.S. consumer magazines, at
86,000 readers, did not change at all. (See Figures 1a and
1b.)
Frequency and Cover Price
Today, 35 percent of all consumer magazines are published monthly and
nearly 25 percent are published bimonthly, with a median cover price of $3.50.
This represents a number of changes over the study decade. For example, almost
40 percent of all consumer magazines in 1990 were published monthly, and the
median cover price, at $2.50, was $1 less than today. Moreover, there has been
a significant increase in the percentage of bimonthly publications, from 18.9
to 24.7 percent.
Also of note is the fact that, while free distribution (or
"controlled" circulation) has long been the norm in the specialized
business or "trade" magazine publishing, it has become more widely
adopted in the consumer publications as well:
Over the study decade the percentage of magazines using controlled circulation
more than doubled, rising from 8.3 to 17.9 percent. (See
Figures 2a, 2b, 3a and 3b.)
Advertising
Rates
The price charged for advertising is a function of both the size of the
individual medium's audience and the attractiveness of that audience to
advertisers. The median page rate for a black-and-white advertisement in
consumer magazines in 2000 was $3,740, up from just under $2,600 in 1990.
However, the price of advertising is perhaps more usefully expressed in
terms of cost per thousand (cpm) readers or
viewers. For magazines, the cost is that of a full-page black-and-white
advertisement per thousand readers; for television, cost of a 30-second
commercial per thousand viewers. For comparison, network television's cpm
is typically between $6 and $12, a figure that, not coincidentally, is also
the cpm of TV Guide. Large general-interest
magazines such as Reader's Digest and Ladies Home Journal have cpm's
in the $20 range, and the newsweeklies such as Time and Newsweek
cluster around $30. The more specialized the audience is, the more a magazine can charge. As a result, magazines serving
special reader interests often have cpms two or
three times that of the newsmagazines. For example, Popular Photography
has a cpm of about $65.
The industry's median cpm rose from $32 in
1990 to $42 in 2000, an increase of more than 30 percent. In addition, other
changes in the cpm and page-rate histograms of
1990 and 2000 are notable: In 2000, a stronger peak emerges in the page-rate
data between prices of $27,000 and $57,000, supporting a claim to an increased
specialization of magazines. (See Figures 4a, 4b, 5a and
5b.)
Comparative
Results and Discussion
Circulation
Gender was
initially presumed to be a strong factor to explain the change in circulation
over the past ten years. Indeed, almost 80 percent of all consumer magazines
are now gender-specific (see endnote 2). During the decade, the percentage of
female magazines remained roughly constant, but male magazines rose from 41.7
to 50.0 percent of readers, and joint magazines lost more than 10 percentage
points. Viewed as a whole, 50 percent of all magazine
are aimed at male readers, just under 30 percent are women's magazines, and
the balance have joint readerships. Furthermore, the median circulation of
magazines for men is 84,500 (up from 78,000 in 1990), while the median
readership of women's publications fell from 105,500 in 1990 to 95,000 in
2000. (See Figures 6a and 6b.)
At
first glance, it might seem that the larger median circulation of female
magazines is merely a function of the number of titles. If the total number of
male and female readers of gender-specific magazines were equal, the
availability of fewer female titles could, by simple arithmetic, explain the
more female readers per female publication. Historically, however, the total
number of male and female readers of gender-specific magazines is not equal.
Indeed, the aggregate total circulation of all female magazines in 1990 was
almost 50 percent larger than that of male publications: 203 million to
137 million.14 The 2000 data, however, shows a market
convergence, with male readership rising to 180 million and female rising to
only 210 million. So while it remains true that more females read magazines,
the gap has closed significantly.
Two pivotal changes emerge from this data. The first is that the
percentage of titles devoted to men has notably increased, the percentage of
women’s magazines has remained roughly the same and the number of magazines
targeted at joint audiences has declined significantly. To explain the growth
in the percentage of men's titles, one can perhaps begin with the notion of
what might be called pent-up demand. It can be argued, albeit speculatively,
that the retreat of feminism as a sociocultural
force during the 1990s made possible an expansion of magazines serving men's
interests that previously might have been regarded as less socially
acceptable. Examples of the areas reflecting this increase might include a
successful new category of magazines bawdily and unapologetically addressing
post-pubescent male fantasies (e.g., Maxim, Stuff, and FHM).
In addition, it should be noted that one of the largest categories of men's
magazines relates to sports and leisure activities, and that the number and
diversity of such activities -- and therefore the magazines that serve them --
has grown significantly in the past decade.
Equally interesting are the changes in median circulation over the last
decade. (See Figures 7a and 7b.) The precipitous
decline of almost 15 percent in the median readership of magazines aimed at
women and the significant increase in median male circulation suggest an
interesting phenomenon. One way to understand this is to posit what might be
called a mode reversal in the nature of the periodicals' editorial
conceptualization of gender. Traditionally, female magazines had significantly
larger circulations than male magazines, in part because women's interests
seemed to extend across fewer but more generalized categories of subjects in a
notably inclusive way. Men's increase, in contrast, tended to fractionate in
concert with narrowly drawn (mostly leisure-active) interests. In the last 10
years, however, the defining of women's interests in narrow terms seems to
have resonated with the female reading public. For example, rather than larger
magazines dealing with a spectrum of topics related to appearance and
attractiveness, now there are individual magazines addressing, for instance,
the subject of beauty as an individual niche, or, even more specifically, the
physical health aspects of beauty.
The changes recorded in men's magazines are somewhat harder to explain.
While it is apparent that they are becoming, at least in one sense, more like
women's magazines, the causes are difficult to isolate. It is notable that the
median circulations of all three types of magazines (female, male and joint)
are merging toward a uniform number of readers.
Other Quantitative Measures (Frequency, Cover Price,
CPM)
Subsequent tests reveal changes since 1990 in a number of the other
economic variables under consideration. These include publication frequency
(which decreased from 12.0 to 11.0 issues per year); cover price (the median
cover price jumped from $2.50 to $3.50); and cpm
(the median rocketed from $32 to $42). (See Figure 8.)
For one other variable, the price charged for a full-page
black-and-white advertisement (page rate), the median increased from $2,591 to
$3,470 during the 1990s. In all likelihood this is not directly related to
gender per se. Rather, the primary determinant of page rates is circulation
size, the median of which has slightly increased in the past 10 years.
Each of these parameters, in turn, and their challenges over the decade
reflect interesting forces at work within the magazine industry. The lowering
of the median frequency from 12 to 11 issues per year can be explained by the
growing insistence of advertisers to make any efficiencies possible be
realized in their advertising spending. The manifestation of this insistence
was a growing unwillingness to advertise at times of the year when readers
were either away from home (e.g. August), or less likely to buy (e.g. January,
after the holiday season). In response to this withholding of advertising
dollars, the 1990s saw a growing trend in magazine publishing to move to a
ten-times-per-year frequency, which allowed publishers to combine their
July/August issues and their December/January ones as well. By saving on
printing and distribution costs with fewer issues -- in effect, not printing
those issues, which would have been poorly supported by advertising --
publishers were able to optimize profit and accommodate the desires of their
advertisers. This move toward frequencies of less than the conventional
monthly publication largely explains the decline in the median frequency
during the 1990s.
While the increase from $2.50 to $3.50 in cover price over the decade
is substantial in percentage terms, it reflects the inherent price sensitivity
magazines encounter on the newsstand. The increase in cover price can be
ascribed to three factors: inflation, the increase in manufacturing and
distribution costs, and competition on the newsstand. Moreover, it is clear
that the American magazine-reading public is significantly price-resistant
when dealing with the purchase of periodicals.
The best way to examine the increase in advertising rates, which during
the 1990s increased from $2,591 to $3,740, is to consider the growth of the
median cpm, which is derived from dividing a
magazine's page rate by its circulation. In rising from $32 to $42, the cpm
reflects not only inflation and a boom economy in the 1990s, but also an
increase in "niching" of the magazine
industry. The latter reason rests on the fact that the more targeted the
audience (and its greater propensity to consume), the greater is a magazine's
ability to charge advertisers a higher page rate and therefore a higher cpm.
Subject Matter
A last area of investigation is the possible relationship between
economic factors affecting magazines and
magazine categories based on subject matter. Using a developed categorization
scheme,15 it is noteworthy that the two
largest categories in both 2000 and 1990, Sports/Hobbies (38.7 percent and
32.0 percent, respectively) and Travel/Regional (15.0 percent and 19.3
percent, respectively) account for over half of the entire population of
consumer magazines. The 2000 data show that a smaller but nonetheless
significant category, Business/Finance, has decreased its share of the total
by almost 50 percent. On the other hand, the Sports/Hobbies category saw a
marked 20 percent increase during the decade. (See Figures
9a and 9b.)
While somewhat speculative in nature, a number of sociocultural
inferences might be drawn from the results of the analysis of relating
economic factors and other sociological factors to subject matter. For
example, it is clear that rising levels of education and affluence were
accompanied by a concomitant increase in leisure during the 1990s. If one
holds that magazines are a unique marker of the social reality of their time,
it should come as no surprise that sports-related and travel/regional
publications prospered during this period. More problematical, however, is
that a conventional view of the "go-go" 1990s would be at a loss to
explain the decreasing share of business/finance magazines. It is possible
that a further time-phased analysis would show a marked expansion of this
category through 1998, but then a severe decrease thereafter with the economic
contraction that originated with the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the
folding of many publications celebrating the New Economy.
Conclusion
It is clear that the pressures of economic business parameters continue
to be an important determinant in shaping the U.S. consumer magazine industry.
By comparing the results of two quantitative studies that
employ the same research methodology, this study addresses some of those
economic factors affecting the publishing industry, as well as a number of
related questions, in a historical context. It can be concluded that a
number of the defining business parameters (e.g., levels of circulation, cover
price, advertising rates, cpms, etc.) have
undergone significant change in the last decade. Indeed, the median cover
price and ad rate and have increased. These changes indicate the periodical
market's reaction to the varied economic pressures of cost management and the
optimization of revenue within the market conditions of the 1990s. Moreover,
these forces may also serve to illuminate a number of the prevailing sociocultural
dimensions of contemporary America, from the declining median number of issues
per year to the rise in niched, gender-related
magazine categories. Most importantly, these industry trends, spurred by
diverse market changes, reflect -- perhaps speculatively — the ways in which
magazines may mirror the cultural reality of the times in which they are
produced.
2. See Frank Luther Mott, A History of American
Magazines, 5 Volumes (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938) and
Theodore Peterson, Magazines in the Twentieth Century (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1956).
3.
See John W. Tebbel and Mary Ellen Zuckerman, The
Magazine in America, 1741-1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991);
David Abrahamson, Magazine-Made America: The Cultural Transformation of the
Postwar Periodical (New York: Hampton Press, 1996); David Abrahamson, ed.,
The American Magazine: Research Perspectives and Prospects (Ames, Iowa:
Iowa State University Press, 1995); A.J. Van Zuilen,
The Life Cycle of Magazines: A Historical Study of the Decline and Fall of
the General Interest Mass Audience Magazine in the United States during the
Period 1946-1972 (Uithorn,
The Netherlands, 1977); Alan Nourie and Barbara Nourie,
American Mass Market Magazines (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990); and
David Paul Nord, "An Economic Perspective on
Formula in Popular Culture," Journal of American Culture 3 (Spring
1980): 17-31. See also Benjamin M. Compaine, The
Business of Consumer Magazines (White Plains, N.Y.: Knowledge Industry
Publications, 1982); Benjamin M. Compaine, Consumer
Magazines at the Crossroads: A Study of General and Special Interest Magazines
(White Plains, N.Y.: Knowledge Industry Publications, 1974); William Parkman
Rankin, The Evolution of the Business Management of Selected General
Consumer Magazines (New York: Praeger, 1984);
Neil Whitman, "Applied Economics: Magazine Publishers," Instructor
81.7 (March 1972): 44.
4. See Ramayya
Krishnan and
Associations...........Civic
College & Alumni
Education & Teacher
Fraternal Clubs & Associations
Labor & Trade Union
Mature
Military & Naval
Religious & Denominational
General/News...........Affluence
General Editorial (news)
Literary, Book Reviews & Writing
Media & Personalities
News (weekly)
News (daily, biweekly, other)
Newsweeklies (alternative)
Newsletters
Newspaper
Magazines
Opinion, Thought & Commentary
Political & Social
Family/Home/Shelter....Babies
Bridal
Dressmaking & Needlework
Gardening
Home Service & Home
Parenthood
TV & Radio
Lifestyle/Fashion......Art & Antiques
Entertainment and Performing Arts
Epicurean
Fashion,
Beauty & Grooming
Lifestyle
Men's
Popular Culture
Women's
Business/Finance.......Business & Finance
Computers
Group
Buying Opportunities
Home Office & Small Business
Sports/Hobbies.........Adventure & Outdoor Recreation
Automotive
Aviation
Boating & Yachting
Campers & Recreational Vehicles
Camping
Crafts, Games, Hobbies & Models
Dancing
Dogs & Pets
Fishing & Hunting
Gaming
History
Horses, Riding & Breeding
Motorcycle
Music
Mystery, Adventure & Sci-Fi
Motorcycle
Photography
Special Interest Publications
Sports
Science/Health.........Fitness
Health
Mechanics & Science
Nature & Ecology
Science & Technology
Travel/Regional........Inflight & Enroute
Entertainment Guides & Programs
Hotel Inroom
Metro, State & Regional
Metro, Entertainment, Radio & TV
Travel
Youth/Other............Almanacs & Directorie
Black & African-American
Children's
Comics
Disabilities
Ethnic
Gay
Teen
Youth
In a few instances, the SRDS categorization of some individual
magazines in the random sample was somewhat at odds with reality. When this
was the case, the publication was assigned to a more appropriate cluster. To
satisfy assumptions of certain statistical tests, these nine clusters were
"collapsed" into seven categories. When this was required, a certain
inherent logic was applied, e.g. General/News and Association together, and
Business/Finance combined with Science/Health. The resulting categories were:
Family/Home/Shelter
Lifestyle/Fashion
Sports/Hobbies
Business/Finance/Science/Health
Travel/Regional
Youth/Other
Whitman,
Neil. "Applied Economics: Magazine Publishers." Instructor
81.7 (March 1972): 44.
=======================================================================
FIGURE 1a. Circulation (all
magazines) 2000
Count Circ
Midpoint (000s)
91
25
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
68
75
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
30
125
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
19
175
XXXXXXXXXX
16
225
XXXXXXXX
5
275
XXX
9
325
XXXXX
4
375
XX
8
425
XXXX
8
475
XXXX
8
525
XXXX
1
575
X
5
625
XXX
0
675
3
725
XX
3
775
XX
1
825
X
1
875
X
1
925
X
3
975
XX
5
1,025 XXX
0
1,075
2
1,125 X
0
1,175
1
1,225 X
=
1
1,325 X
Mean=278,105
=
(s.d.=676,118)
1
1,525 X
Median=86,513
=
Mode=35000
2
1,675 X
Minimum=1000
=
Maximum=8,174,046
1
3,025 X
Sum=83,431,616
=
1
4,525 X
Valid cases=300
=
Missing Cases=0
1
5,025 X
=
1
8,175 X
I.........I.........I.........I.........I.........I
0
20
40
60
80
100
Histogram Frequency
======================================================================
FIGURE 1b. Circulation (all
magazines) 1990
Count Circ
Midpoint (000s)
76
25 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
46
75 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
21
125 XXXXXXXXXXX
14
175 XXXXXXX
7
225 XXXX
12
275 XXXXXX
8
325 XXXX
6
375 XXX
3
425 XX
1
475 X
2
525 X
2
575 X
3
625 XX
3
675 XX
1
725
X
1
775 X
2
825 X
0
875
3
925 XX
1
975 X
0
1,025
1
1,075 X
1
1,125 X
3
1,175 XX
1
1,225 X
=
1
1,675 X
1
1,725 X
=
1
1,975 X
1
2,025 X
=
Mean=442,851
1
2,275 X
(s.d.=1,667,941)
=
Median=86,000
1
3,825 X
Mode=75,000
=
Minimum=1,000
1
5,125 X
Maximum=16,555,000
=
Sum=100,970,000
1
7,075 X
=
Valid cases=228
1
16,375 X
Missing cases=0
=
1
16,555 X
I.........I.........I.........I.........I
0
20
40
60
80
Histogram frequency
=======================================================================
FIGURE 2a. Frequency of Publication
(all magazines) 2000
Frequency Cases
Percent
Freq
Cases Percent
(n/year) &n