The Canadian magazine industry remains viable from an audience perspective, but is increasingly challenged by a lack of ad dollars, said industry representatives during a recent episode of TVO’s public affairs program The Agenda with Steve Paikin entitled “Canadian magazines anyone?”
Sarah Fulford, editor-in-chief of Toronto Life told host Steve Paikin while the internet has provided the St. Joseph Media-owned city publication with new readers, it has simultaneously taken away ad dollars.
“We all have an ad revenue problem, in part because of the disruption of the internet,” she said. “However, we have a lot of new readers that way, which is wonderful.”
“In our industry we don’t really have an audience problem,” agreed Steve Maich, senior vice-president of publishing at Rogers Communications, the country’s largest publisher of consumer magazines and the owner of Marketing. “What we’ve got is a revenue problem.”
Maich described the problem facing magazines as “the worst of both worlds” with advertisers cutting back on their investment and leaving publishers with “fairly robust” audiences that can no longer be sufficiently monetized. At the same time, publishers must still contend with significant legacy costs, such as printing and distribution.
He said magazines have traditionally charged below cost for magazines, with advertising revenue helping make up the difference. “As advertising has gone away, those entrenched legacy costs in print have been a problem for us,” he said.
According to the fall study from Toronto-based Print Measurement Bureau, combined readership of the 81 consumer titles it measured was 1 million, down only slightly from 1.01 million in fall 2010. Average minutes spent per issue actually increased during the same period, from 41 to 45, while average degree of interest also increased negligibly, from 6.8 to 6.9.
That is the good news. The bad news is that Canadian ad spend figures released this week by ZenithOptimedia Canada show ad revenues for the magazine industry have fallen steady since achieving a historic high of $732 million in 2007, with 2014 revenues projected to fall another 15%, to $485 million.
In the accompanying commentary, ZenithOptimedia said erosion of ad revenue for consumer titles is accelerating after moderate declines in the past three years, calling for a 10% per year reduction each year through 2017.
Asked by Paikin why Rogers was willing to launch an expensive venture like Sportsnet magazine in 2011, in a less-than-ideal climate for print, Maich said research indicated significant reader demand for a Canadian alternative to the likes of sports magazine titans such as Sports Illustrated.
He said Sportsnet began outselling its U.S. counterpart on newsstands within two months (it currently has between 65,000 and 70,000 subscribers) and had attracted more Canadian subscribers within two years.
Maich said Rogers increasingly believes in integrated ad sales, with Sportsnet magazine working in conjunction with its TV and radio properties and a “robust” digital business. “It was an opportunity to come in and round out the platform and create the first five-platform sports brand in the country,” he said. “That’s worked out quite well for us.”
Jonathan Kay, who recently took over as editor-in-chief of The Walrus after 16 years as an opinion and op-ed columnist with the National Post, said there is still a market for the type of long-form journalism in which The Walrus specializes, but that the central challenge is delivering it in an appropriate format.
“For a lot of people it’s got to be digital, for some people it’s still print – but you’ve got to address every platform to get that audience,” he said.
While declining to provide specifics, Kay said that circulation for The Walrus remains stable, with “tens of thousands” of active subscribers in addition to its newsstand sales.
He said the biggest issue for magazines isn’t the battle for people’s money, but their time. “It might mean missing a TV show or staying off social media for a day…so you have to make it worth [readers’] while in terms of both information and entertainment.”
