Regional Magazines a Print Bastion against Online

City and regional magazines might be smaller than their B2B and mainstream consumer counterparts, but they have yet to be seriously confronted by the online threat and so are flourishing, according to Folio:’s second annual City and Regional Publishing Survey, writes MarketingCharts.

Some findings from Folio:’s survey:

• Most city and regional publishers are single-title publishers:
  • 45 percent of survey respondents say they publish one magazine, unchanged from 2006.
  • Some 23 percent say they publish two titles, compared with 19 percent in 2006
  • 12 percent say they publish 4-6 titles, compared with 10 percent in 2006.
• Circulation remains relatively small:
  • Among the group of publishers with a mean circulation of 36,600 for their smallest titles, 34 percent said circulation was 20,000-39,999, and 21 percent said their smallest title’s circulation was in the 10,000-19,999 range.
  • Among the group with a mean circulation of 64,900 for their largest titles, 28 percent report that their largest-circulation title’s circulation is 20,000-39,999.
  • 21 percent of survey respondents say their smallest title has a circulation of 10,000-19,999, and 12 percent say their smallest title has fewer than 10,000 readers.
  • 16 percent say their largest title falls in the 40,000-60,000 range, and 6 percent say their largest title has fewer than 10,000 readers.
  • 6 percent of respondents say their smallest title has circulation of 100,000 or more, whereas 14 percent say their largest title has 100,000 or more readers.
  • Paid circulation (including newsstand) constitutes the majority of city and regional circulation, followed by “controlled, not requested” and then “controlled requested”:
    • 22 percent said “controlled not requested” is their major source of circulation
    • 14 percent said “controlled requested” is the major source of circulation, compared with 9 percent who said so in 2006.

MarketingCharts provides more findings from the Folio: survey.