Information About Magazines

By Author: Adela
Total Articles: 74
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On August 6, 1990, the Media Business section of the New York Times illustrated one of its purposes for existence. Page D13 contained ads for Newsweek and Time, touting their coverage of the crisis in the Middle East. The goal of the ads plainly was to entice readers of the New York Times to buy those issues and to persuade advertisers to advertise in these two newsweeklies.
The same page contained an ad for Ebony. In this ad, the publisher appealed to would-be advertisers:

This November the Ebony Magazine 45th Anniversary Issue is the biggest in our history offering a chance for your ad message to reach 9,519,000 consumers with a 43 percent penetration of the Black consumer Tag Heuer Replica Watches market. The closing date is August 24th. The November Ebony 45th Anniversary Issue offers the single largest concentration of the estimated $260 billion Black consumer market ever available. Be a part of it by calling. . . .

The ad then provided telephone numbers in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Like television and radio, but ...
... unlike newspapers, magazine advertising prices are determined by ratings. Magazines are rated by Simmons Market Research Bureau, the Media Research Institute, and the Magazine Publishers' Association. Surveys by Simmons determine the number of readers per magazine copy. A very high rating is 6—meaning that, on average, six persons read one copy of the magazine—and 1.8 is a very low rating. Simmons gathers data through interviews and questionnaires. Such surveys provide advertisers with information about how long readers look at the ads in a particular magazine, as well as how much it costs to reach a target audience.

Advertising is what makes most magazines financially viable. The exceptions are noteworthy. Consumer Reports, whose assessment of products would be questioned if it accepted ads does not. It has a readership of 4,693,453. In late July 1990, Ms. reappeared, this time ad free. Founded as a feminist mass medium in 1973, Ms. lost money for most of its 17-year existence. When it suspended publication in 1989, its circulation was 543,000, with five million dollars in advertising revenue.

In the lead article of the first ad-free issue, Gloria Steinem, one of the magazine's founders, detailed the frustrations of publishing an ad-reliant magazine. For example, a cover story on Afghanistan cost Ms. a long-term contract Breitling Bentley Replica Watches with Revlon, noted Steinem; the women on the cover had worn no makeup. Steinem's lead article, "Sex, Lies & Advertising," indicated that she could not previously have published the article in Ms. for fear of alienating advertisers.

The ad-free move was risky. Whereas its competitors sell for $1.75 or $2.00 per copy, Ms. now costs $5.95 an issue. The first issue contained 96 pages. In 1988, twelve issues of Ms. carried 382 pages of advertising.95 In 2000, however, Ms. was still thriving.