Paid Consumer Circ Continues Decline

Consumer magazine circulation, as tracked by ABC’s latest FAS-FAX report released Monday, continued its decline. The report shows that overall paid subscriptions for the second-half of 2009 were down slightly by 2.23 percent. Single-copy sales declined 9 percent compared to the same period in 2008.

Just Six Magazines See Newsstand Increase

Of ABC’s 25 best-selling newsstand magazines, only six saw an increase during the second half of 2009: Real Simple (+6.16 percent), O, The Oprah Magazine (+5.81 percent), Vanity Fair (+5.12 percent), Us Weekly (+1.94 percent) People Stylewatch (+1.89 percent) and Seventeen (+0.12 percent).

Cosmopolitan dipped a bit by 1.45 percent, while Life & Style Weekly was the only title in the category to see no change in newsstand sales.

Good Housekeeping’s single-copy sales took a massive hit of 30.75 percent during the second half. OK! Weekly (-17.53 percent), Men’s Health (-13.82 percent) and In Touch Weekly (-10.49 percent) also suffered double digital declines.

Among ABC's top-ten single-copy gainers that sold more than 100,000 units, Psychology Today (+12.17 percent), Lindy’s Baseball Magazine (+12.1 percent) and Mother Earth News (+11.62 percent) benefitted from double-digit increases.

Clean Eating (+7.18 percent), Real Simple (+6.16 percent), O, The Oprah Magazine (+5.81 percent), Discover (+5.66 percent), Vanity Fair (+5.12 percent) and Cooking Light (+4.24 percent) round out the top ten.

While newsstand sales declined 9 percent when compared with second-half of 2008, the plummet appears to have slowed. The rate of decline between first and second-half of 2009 was only 1.5 percent.

Total Paid & Verified Circ

Out of the 25 top-selling consumer magazines in total paid & verified circ, only 10 titles increased during the second half of 2009. The number-one title, AARP the Magazine, only saw a 0.09 percent increase in total paid circ, while women’s titles such as Glamour (+6.88 percent), O, The Oprah Magazine (+4.84 percent) and Cosmopolitan (+2.57 percent) saw more substantial increases.

Remedy/Remedy MD (+21.09 percent) had the largest increase in paid & verified circ in the top-25 category, while TV Guide (-25.8 percent), Prevention (-13.16 percent), Reader’s Digest (-13.09 percent) and National Geographic (-11.15 percent) declined the most.

Among ABC's top-25 paid & verified circ gainers that sold more than 100,000 units, women’s titles again saw substantial improvement. Women’s Health jumped 21.53 percent during the second half of 2009, followed by Body + Soul (+19.71 percent), Siempre Mujer (+11.79 percent), All You (+10.65 percent) and People Stylewatch (+8.56 percent).

Special interest and enthusiast titles such as Off-Road Adventures (+483.03 percent), American Rifleman (+20.19 percent), Birds & Blooms (+14.68 percent) and Better Homes & Gardens’ Heart-Healthy (+13.98 percent) also had significant gains in total paid & verified circ.

Overall, the total number of paid subscriptions and the total number of verified subscriptions were both down by 1.12 percent and 5.12 percent, respectively.

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