Magazine Trends

Report Outline
The Crowded Marketplace
Demographics of Publishing
The Struggle to Thrive
Special Focus

The Crowded Marketplace

From American Health and Working Mother to American Photographer and Food & Wine, The Guide to Good Taste, there are now more magazines published in the United States than ever before—11,090 at last count. Publishers have rushed to serve special interests, especially those of affluent young Americans, whose spending habits are reflected in publications devoted solely to jogging, gourmet cooking or other “upscale” pursuits.

“The proliferation of special interest magazines and departmentalization of general purpose magazines to reach these special interests,” William F. Gorog, president of the Magazine Publishers Association, has noted, “has been a phenomenon of the last 10 years.” The ultimate significance of the phenomenon is unclear. It may be that the fragmenting of American magazines bespeaks a fragmenting of American society, a new preoccupation with self at the expense of the larger community. But whether that is so or not, there is no doubt that magazines have been avidly pursuing every special interest that bounds into view.

In 1984, the advertising-rich year of the Olympics and the presidential election, magazines had a very good year: Advertising revenues for the 142 magazines then in the Publishers Information Bureau (PIB) totaled $4.7 billion, the highest ever. But last year, although ad revenues climbed a bit higher, to $4.9 billion, ad pages were down and so, yet again, were store sales of single copies. While no cause for widespread panic, these downward movements, with their hint that there may be limits to growth, have made the magazine industry at least a little uneasy. There is more need than ever before, said Leo Scullin of Young & Rubicam, a leading New York ad agency, for “careful and astute management” of both magazine advertising and circulation.