TV listings books were the hardest-hit category in the latest survey of Canadian magazine readership.
New data from Toronto’s Print Measurement Bureau shows that magazine readership among Canadians 12+ declined from 116.5 million in 2006 to 110.5 million this year. However, the drop is much less pronounced—108 million to 107 million—when TV books are excluded.
TV Week Magazine, for example, saw its average issue readership drop 20.9% to 177,000, while Starweek’s readership dropped 14.3%, from 1.3 million to 1.1 million and French-language title TV 7 Jours/TV Hebdo saw its readership drop 12.9% to 887,000.
The past year has seen a number of publishers abandon TV listings books: Transcontinental Media’s TV Guide moved to a web-only format, while The Globe and Mail shifted TV listings into its weekly “7” entertainment section of the newspaper.
While the average amount of time readers spent with each issue and the number of occasions read per issue remained relatively unchanged at 41 minutes and 2.3 respectively, the study revealed across-the-board decreases in readership among the 100+ titles measured by PMB. In fact, only 12 of the English titles and 10 of the French titles common to the 2006 and 2007 studies saw their readership increase.
The drops ranged from a statistically insignificant 0.7% decline for the Rogers Publishing title Glow up to a 20.8% drop for Torstar’s free alternative weekly Eye. Other major consumer titles with significant readership decreases included Western Living (down 14.7%), Toronto Life (down 11.3%), Gardening Life (down 10.9%), and Canadian Business (down 9.2%). Several French-language titles also saw readership decreases, including Derniére Heure (down 21.6%), Sélection du Reader’s Digest, (down 10.1%) and Clin d’Oeil (down 11.1%).
“When you look at the numbers your initial thought is ‘There are some fairly significant drops here, particularly among big titles—not just little guys where you might see some fluctuation,” says Susan Ellsworth, vice-president, research director for OMD Canada and chair of the PMB research committee.
However, she adds that 12+ numbers are not the currency upon which media agencies base magazine buys. “More so than other media, magazines are often bought against a product target as opposed to a demographic. You might buy against people who eat at McDonald’s or people who use Dove soap, instead of women 25-54. It’s hard when you’re looking at top-line numbers to draw things out that are really relevant. These aren’t what magazines sell on.”
Fred Auchterlonie, PMB chair and executive vice-president of client operations for PHD Canada, also notes that there are “some interesting increases” among 12-17 year-olds, most notably in titles like Reader’s Digest, Time and Maclean’s. “They’re certainly not books that you think would skew that way, but all of them show increases,” he says.
Unsurprisingly, Reader’s Digest remained Canada’s most widely-read magazine with 7.1 million readers—“that’s not really a headline….It would be if they weren’t,” says Auchterlonie—while Canadian Geographic vaulted from fourth to second spot with 4.4 million readers (up 7.3% over last year).
With so much client and agency focus on how the Internet is impacting traditional media., PMB president Steve Ferley also announced that the research organization will include magazine website data in its 2009 study. The question about magazine website readership will be included in the 2008 fieldwork, which commences in October.
