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Of
course newspapers are the biggest basket case
with some already folding their print operations and
going 100% digital. But new data from the magazine
industry shows that sector also got clobbered
in the opening quarter of 2009.
According
to the Publishers
Information Bureau, rate card revenue for
consumer magazines dropped 20.2% compared to the
same quarter in 2009, while the number of ad pages
plunged 26%. No
category escaped the carnage. In ad pages,
Financial, Real Estate and Insurance titles collectively
dove 45.7%, Automotive plummeted
47.5% and Retail retreated 34%. The most
solid performer, Drugs and Remedies, still had no
antidote to the destruction, taking a 13%
hit. |
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Among
individual well-known magazines, here are some examples
of the across the board decline; Boating
(-47.4%), BusinessWeek
(-39.8%), Entertainment
Weekly (-37.5%), ESPN Magazine
(-31.8%), Martha Stewart Living
(-37%), Motor
Trend (-31.9%) and
Spin
(-39.3%).
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I
subscribe to magazines in a lot of different
categories and in recent months the issues that
arrive in the mail are often so thin they look more
like pamphlets than magazines. This latest
bloodbath in print media again underscores how
timely the theme is for next week's GeoDomain
Expo - "Freefall! (How to
Monetize the Collapse of Traditional Media).
The show runs April 23-25 at the Catamaran
Resort in San Diego (I will be there
to cover it for you of course.) |
The .com city domain
owners who will be meeting in San Diego are
exceptionally well positioned to take advantage of the
historic migration of media to the web. As you know,
many city magazines are named after the city they cover
(like Los Angeles Magazine and New
York Magazine). The beauty of the .com city
domain is that it already has the perfect brand
for any local media operation, whether it be a city
magazine, a newspaper or a broadcast outlet. It also has
the versatility to be used, as many of them are, as a
tourist/travel guide. For
the truly ambitious owners of those domains, all
of those ingredients can be combined into a dominating
one stop shop that has the brand recognition needed
to mop the floor with the competition. Virtually all of
the major city .com owners have been hard at work
developing and improving their websites for years now.
The opportunity to get development tips from the large
number of them who will be in San Diego makes attending
that show an especially attractive proposition for
anyone looking to turn a domain asset into a full blown
business. |
