Wall Street Journal
February 7, 2011
By TESS STYNES
U.S. magazine circulation continued to weaken in the second half of 2010, according to preliminary data from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
The steady decline in U.S. magazine newsstand sales accelerated in the second half of 2010, falling 7.3% compared with a drop of 5.6% in the first half.
Overall, total paid and verified magazine circulation declined 1.2%.
Steep declines have plagued the magazine industry in recent years as readers migrated to the Internet for news and entertainment and the recession curbed discretionary purchases.
Hearst Corp.'s Cosmopolitan again recorded the most single-copy sales, at an average 1.6 million copies, down 11% from a year earlier.
On a total paid and verified basis, Better Homes and Gardens published by Meredith Corp., remained in the top spot, with circulation growth of 0.7% to an average 7.7 million copies. It took the top spot from Reader's Digest in the second half of 2009.
Newsstand sales of US Weekly fell 16% to 812,089 copies, posting the biggest decline among the nation's 25 most-sold magazines.
Of the seven publications with newsstand sales growth, the biggest newsstand gainer was Bauer Publishing's Woman's World, with a 9.1% increase to 1.3 million copies.
The biggest paid-circulation rise was by Game Informer Magazine at 5.1 million copies, up 33%.
AARP The Magazine and AARP Bulletin continued to have the highest circulation, at 24.4 million and 23.6 million, down 2.6% and 2%, respectively.
I knew that magazine sales were declining but I thought in the recent years that they had made some sort of a comeback. Because of that this article was very surprising to me. I wasn’t surprised, however, that Cosmopolitan has the most single copy sales since I feel that their key demographic is young women who might not want the actual subscription. This article shows that with all the benefits that the Internet holds, there is significant drawbacks in several industries.
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