Launches Down 16% in 1999

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Feb, 2000 by Heather Holliday

Industry analyst Samir Husni outlines the prevailing trends among magazines introduced during the 1990s.

* Has the proliferation of cable networks and the Internet stifled the introduction of new magazines? Are start-ups feeling the effects of an overcrowded newsstand? For the greater part of the decade, the answer would have been a resounding "No." The number of new-title introductions soared from 557 in 1990 to 1,065 in 1998. But in 1999, new launches were down 16 percent--the largest drop in 13 years, according to Samir Husni, a professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi.

According to Husni, who has tracked magazine launches for the past 15 years, publishers created 894 new titles last year, 171 less than the year before. But Husni is quick to add that he is not alarmed by the decline. "A trend is not broken by one year of lower numbers," he says, pointing to a number of similar past examples, including a drop of 81 titles in 1997 from 1996's 933 launches. That, he says, was then followed by 1998's jump to 1,065 new titles.

"It may be a big drop, but it's still a lot of new magazines in one year," he says of the 1999 figures. "And there are plenty of magazines out there. When I started in 1985, we had about 2,500 consumer magazines available to the general public. Now we're almost hitting the 6,000 mark."

He attributes the year's drop to an overdue market adjustment in supply and demand. "We are always producing more new launches than we're using," he says.

The last 10 years

The American public now prefers celebrity news to sex, according to Husni's decade-long study of top consumer launch categories. The number-one category in 1999 was media personalities, which totaled 107 launches, as compared to 1990 when sex topped the charts with 62 titles. But the biggest trend among launches in the last decade is that magazines have become ultra-specialized, says Husni. "We have become a segmented society. Ethnicities and lifestyles have been dissected to find the thread that unites the one tiny individual community. Now we are aiming at that." For example, he says, the entire gay population used to have a magazine, now titles are more focused, targeting, for example, gay black men.

The launch climate has also changed in the sense that bigger media companies are funding a greater number of start-ups. "New magazines are no longer the turf of the individual entrepreneur," he says. He attributes this to the success of early entrepreneurial launches. In the eighties, the big media companies focused on their well-established titles, says Husni. "In the early nineties, when those big magazines started losing circulation by leaps and bounds because of all the new launches, it was a wake-up call to the established magazine people."

Plus, an increasingly competitive business climate has made launches a daunting venture for independent publishers. Large media companies have the money and muscle that small entrepreneurs often do not have, says Husni. Wholesaler consolidation and distribution restrictions, plus the climbing expense of direct mail, have made it tougher for small businesses to succeed.

"It is more difficult to launch a new title now than it was 10 years ago," says Husni. "It is less friendly in terms of the available space on the newsstand and in terms of competition. We used to say, 'Give me a good copycat and you have a chance.' Now you have to give me a cougar or something with sharp teeth. You have to really fight your way onto the newsstands."

According to Husni, 85 percent of all new titles come from small publishing companies, but 90 percent of the launches that are still publishing after 10 years are introduced by the big media companies. Overall, the success ratio has not changed in the last decade, Husni explains. At least half of 1999's launches will fail before the year is over, he says. And, historically, only three out of 10 launches survive over time. But statistically, large companies have a greater survival rate.

Despite the changing landscape, there are some constants, says Husni. Technology may change the method of delivering information, but, he says, "magazine people will still have the job of collecting, organizing, reporting and presenting information. The 'magazinist' is going to be the same."

Magazines are the best measure of pop culture in the country, says Husni. "I can go to any newsstand and tell by the types of magazines they carry what type of neighborhood it is, and what kind of people shop there. I don't think there is any other indicator that is better than the magazine. And that will never change."

                              Start-Up Stats
                 Here's how titles launched in 1990 stack
                up against start-ups from 1999 (estimated).
                                 1990   1999
Average cover price              $3.63  $5
Average subscription price       $18.50 $24
Average total number of pages    94     91
Average total number of ad pages 19     18
SOURCE: SAMIR HUSNI'S GUIDE TO NEW CONSUMER MAGAZINES
                              Survival Rates
     Start-ups Titles still
     with a    published
     a 4-plus  at end of
     frequency 1999
1990 325       47
1991 363       53
1992 443       64
1993 417       86
1994 458       115
1995 510       136
1996 535       111
1997 459       135
1998 518       213
1999 475       235 [*]
(*.)ESTIMATE
SOURCE: MRMAGAZINE.COM