As the news media have gone through wave after wave of consolidation the magazine industry is consolidating as well. A handful of companies now controls the industry, at least in terms of revenues and in terms of owning the powerful agenda-setting titles.

But, the consolidation here looks different than it does elsewhere. The top companies are different than the companies that rule in newspapers or television. While they are still large, they are not all part of media behemoths, with the obvious exception of Time Warner and, to a lesser extent, Advance. This is especially true for two of the three news magazines - Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report.

There are several potential reasons for the news magazines' ownership situation. It may be due to the age of these magazines - they are so old and well-established other players from other companies cannot jump into the market to compete. Or it may be that because the real growth in the magazine industry is in the niche and service areas, the news-oriented mission of these magazines simply does not jibe with the strengths of most of the major magazine players.

A Few Big Players

In some ways, the same rush all media felt to consolidate in the 1980s and 1990s hit the magazine industry as well. Indeed, it may be fair to say that the magazine industry in the United States is dominated by four companies: Time Warner (which is by far the largest), Hearst, Advance and Primedia. Together those four companies get about 50 percent of all the magazine revenue that comes from the top 100 media companies.¹ [1]

And when one broadens the list to look at the top 10 magazine companies in 2002, they collect almost three-quarters of the revenues in the industry.² [2]

But the biggest players in the magazine industry in terms of revenue are not necessarily the biggest players in the larger media world. For instance News Corp., Washington Post and Tribune, three giants of the media world - Nos. 7, 21 and 12 of the top 100 media companies, respectively - are only bit players in the magazine sector.

Magazine Revenue of Top-Ten Companies, 2002

Design Your Own Chart [3]

Advertising Age, Chart: 100 Leading Companies

In fact, only four of the top 10 magazine companies - Time Warner, Hearst, Advance and Primedia - are among the 25 largest media companies overall. That is quite contrary to other media. Nine of the top 10 newspaper companies are among the 25 media giants as are all of the top 10 cable television companies.³ [4]