Killer PMB
This was not a good PMB study for magazines. Few showed gains. Many showed big losses. TV listings magazines are quickly becoming magazine relics. But what about the Time's, Canadian Gardening's and Canadian Business's of the world (down 7%, 10% and 10% respectively)?
PMB numbers always bounce, usually without any apparent reason. Even with a big sample of 25,000 and the dampening effect of using a two-year rolling average, individual titles always gain and lose around inexplicably. But this year sucked for nearly every magazine. Can you spell WWW? Or maybe it was just a blip. A blip that will last two years as the "good book" goes away in 2008, the "bad book" stays, and the mystery book arrives.
How's about those new to the study. Last year, before PMB was released, I mocked the entry of a number of low-profile titles questioning the criteria PMB uses to allow new members. You can read it here. One reader alerted me to the fact the Ricardo was apparently a worthy magazine. To quote from his/her comment:
But all of the English magazines I mentioned coughed up a hairball. And now with PMB 2007 - their first complete study, we see the complete damage:
Maybe it's time to cap this thing already. The old version before "recent reading" was showing fatigue as the number of magazines increased and the readership of each declined. Could we have hit the wall on recent reading now too? The new report produced results on 65 English magazines plus 10 daily newspapers. That's up from 55 and 7 just three yeas ago. Or do we really need new blood to suck every year?
PMB numbers always bounce, usually without any apparent reason. Even with a big sample of 25,000 and the dampening effect of using a two-year rolling average, individual titles always gain and lose around inexplicably. But this year sucked for nearly every magazine. Can you spell WWW? Or maybe it was just a blip. A blip that will last two years as the "good book" goes away in 2008, the "bad book" stays, and the mystery book arrives.
How's about those new to the study. Last year, before PMB was released, I mocked the entry of a number of low-profile titles questioning the criteria PMB uses to allow new members. You can read it here. One reader alerted me to the fact the Ricardo was apparently a worthy magazine. To quote from his/her comment:
Be careful dissing magazines like Ricardo- this one has earned its stripes in Quebec over three years of publishing. And now that it is poised to launch an English edition, I would love to see Ricardo give the fat cat "Food and Drink" a run for the money.Well to this readers credit, Ricardo did pretty well with 457,000 readers in its first complete (2-year data) study. But there is no information on its readers per copy because there is no information available on its circulation. I figure all those French fans must be confusing it with Ricardo's TV show. He's like the Oprah of Quebec with a TV show and his name and face on the cover of every issue. Must be a French thing and I clearly don't understand the French mindset because I was wrong about Adorable (17.7 readers per copy) and Summum (10.9 rpc) too. Jobboom was curiously absent (although it still has a PMB logo on its CARD listing) after produced a respectable 477,000 readers (4.9 rpc) in the 2006 1-year report.
But all of the English magazines I mentioned coughed up a hairball. And now with PMB 2007 - their first complete study, we see the complete damage:
- City Parent: 1.2 readers per copy
- Forever Young: 0.8
- Vervegirl: 1.7
- What's Cooking: 2.5 (although that does add up to 3.5 million readers)
- What's Up Kids: 1.8
Maybe it's time to cap this thing already. The old version before "recent reading" was showing fatigue as the number of magazines increased and the readership of each declined. Could we have hit the wall on recent reading now too? The new report produced results on 65 English magazines plus 10 daily newspapers. That's up from 55 and 7 just three yeas ago. Or do we really need new blood to suck every year?
posted by Reptile at 1:15 PM
6 comments
