2004 Annual Report - Magazine Audience

Three trends in news magazine circulation and readership stand out.

First, readership surveys indicate that the audience for news magazines is holding steady, while the audience for pop culture, entertainment and lifestyle magazines is growing. This fits with the trends in ad pages and revenues and suggests one of two things: Either the market for news magazines is more or less at its capacity or the genre needs to be reinvented.

Second, despite changes in content designed to grab younger readers, the audience for news magazines is aging - more than for most other magazine genres. News magazine readers are also more affluent than magazine readers overall, but that is not a big consolation financially. Advertisers are often looking for youth more than money, particularly in general interest magazines like the news weeklies.

Third, while the big three news magazines are finding it hard to increase their circulation, a few smaller circulation books that focus on news and public affairs have found steady growth over the past 15 years. This may suggest that the genre is ripe for change and indeed that the news magazine audience, or at least part of it, is looking for a new approach.