Citing an “ultimately unsustainable” erosion of advertiser support, St. Joseph Media announced Tuesday that it will stop producing a print edition of Canadian Family after its summer issue appears later this month.
St. Joseph president Douglas Knight said the company had been closely monitoring Canadian Family’s readership and revenue trends for the past three years, finally making the decision to adopt a web-only format in recent weeks.
“We had literally pursed every option we possibly could, so by the time we got here it was the only [option] left,” he said. “From a senior management point of view it was reluctant, but unanimous.” Seven positions have been eliminated as a result of the decision, said Knight.
Canadian Family had 921,000 monthly readers 12+ in the most recent Print Measurement Bureau study—down 8.5% from 1.01 million readers in the year-earlier period—while Knight said readership in the magazine’s core women 25-54 demo had actually increased between 2009 and 2014.
The problem wasn’t lack of readers, but a lack of advertising, he said. Citing Leading National Advertiser data, Knight said that between January and April, ad pages for the parenting category—which also includes Rogers Media’s Today’s Parent and the independent Parents Canada—were down 25% over the corresponding year-earlier period, with Canadian Family’s decline slightly more pronounced than the industry average.
He said the category has been further impacted by the recent addition of the custom magazine Walmart Live Better, also published by Rogers.
“We’re not making this decision because of the last four months—we’re making this decision because we’ve been tracking this the last three years, and it just got to the point where it isn’t sustainable,” he said.
“Advertisers are saying they want to participate on the digital property, but print dollars are fewer and farther apart,” he added. “We can’t sustain running the print operation as it continues to slide off the charts, but what we can do is invest in digital.”
Knight said traffic on CanadianFamily.ca has been growing at a triple-digit pace, with audiences among its core target now comparable to those of its print edition.
While there have been scattered examples of print publications adopting a digital-only format (such as the Canadian men’s title Toro, and Auto Trader), Knight said this doesn’t portend a sea change for St. Joseph or the industry as a whole.
There is “absolutely zero contemplation” of adopting a digital-only approach for other popular St. Joseph titles, such as Fashion or Toronto Life, he said. “I’m not sure I’d want to leap to saying, ‘It’s just a matter of time for everybody.’ I just don’t think that’s necessarily true,” he said. “There may be others that pursue this over time, but I’d be a little cautious about taking this story and making it into a trend for the industry.”
