Regional magazines: shakeup and shakeout; regional consumer and business publications are bobbing and weaving to maintain their positions in the marketplace. Which ones will make it?

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, May, 1988 by Michael Couzens, Karlene Lukovitz

Regional magazines: "Your location" magazines--the city and regional titles that propagated like rabbits in this decade--have become a mature category of niche publications. The niche is at or passing its zenith. Does this mean that some of these magazines are approaching a decline? Will we see fewer titles offering a leaner, slightly different, yet still desirable product?

Magazines serving a smaller community may already be in financial difficulty. If the local title is highly refined, as are Location Business, Location Style, or Location Home and Garden, it may be resting on an extremely shaky foundation.

These conclusions emerged from discussions with publishers, editors and analysts. Optimistically the experts note that this year, demand for national and local advertising is up, boosted by the Olympics and paid electioneering. Magazines are benefiting from this tight market, but the experts believe the gain will be temporary, and that it cannot be expected to benefit every local magazine.

In Texas, where the economy soured, Houston City, Texas Homes, Third Coast (Austin city), and a handful of local business titles have all gone to the last roundup. Even the luminous Texas Monthly has had to execute a financial stutter-step or two. And Terry Murphy, former publisher of D Magazine, predicts that ad pages in Texas will have dropped from 9,000 in 1984 to 4,500 when the totals are in for 1988. "You can take those numbers to the bank," he declaims in Dallas talk.

The question in the minds of many "Your location" publishers is, Can Texas happen here" Recalling their own patches of hard times in recent years, lowans, Manhattan stockbrokers and the residents of Silicon Valley in California are among those who know better than to imagine they live in a regional safe-haven economy.

Peter Craig, a publishing consultant who appraises and brokers magazines through his Los Angeles firm, states, "In a cluttered marketplace, there are too many books. There is bound to be a shakeout." Whit McDowell, executive director of the City and Regional Magazine Association (CRMA) in New York, is upbeat only be comparison. "Houston City folded because of the local economy. But CRMA has not lost a single member." The members, though, are some 45 of the sturdiest titles, and they are all required to have Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) audits. Another 220 similar titles McDowell calls "little," and he sees dicey prospects for--using his fictitious example--Bakersfield Lifestyle.

Magazine markets in the "Your location" category are splintering at an alarming rate, with new titles addressing more and more narrow areas of interest, and focusing on more precise demographic targets--whether women, travelers, home owners, the active rich or the idle rich. Obviously, narrowing the audience from the start is risky, but the implications become harrowing when it is noticed that many leading publishers, owning the strongest titles in the category, are busy doing precisely the opposite, through mergers and acquisitions. This is not limited to Texas Monthly buying out Houston City or its mailing list. The premier firms, including owners of Boston, Los Angeles, Texas Monthly and a few others, have sought to align themselves into supergroups, or joint ventures, able to share overhead and to hustle national advertising accounts. If shakeout there shall be, the marginals will falter and fail, but the powerhouses will lose nothing, and could emerge as even hardier competitors.

Proliferation despite the economics

Mike Levy, who founded Texas Monthly 15 years ago, says, "I get the calls all the time. Someone calls and says, 'I want to be a media baron, a publishing magnate. What do I need to know to get started with Des Moines Magazine?' Big problem is, the fixed costs--salaries, staff and rent--are the same whether it's our circulation of 295,000 or a circulation of 50,000. The costs can't be spread on too small a base."

Apparently, when Levy talks, no one listens. New titles are cascading into public view. Everyone has a favorite example of a title that simply does not compute. For Terry Murphy it is Rochester Woman. "Why on earth discard half your potential readers?"

Peter Craig marvels that anyone would invest $4 million in San Diego Home and Garden for the purpose of butting heads with the redoubtable Ed and Gloria Self, whose San Diego was the first and remains one of most successful city titles. (Even North San Diego County now sports its own title, La Jolla.) Consultant Jim Kobak thinks some cities simply outh not to have a city magazine: Wichita.

Philip Merrill, publisher of The Washingtonian and Baltimore, ticks off the names of competitors in and around the Capital Beltway: Regardie's, Dossier, The Washington Post Magazine, Dominion, Apartment Life, and at least 10 other publications having a little niche on the market.

At some point, we lose sight of the "Your location" titles, and see an even broader arena. For example, Merrill states that he competes to some degree with Playbill, Promenade and Guest Informant.