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Top Three Newsweeklies Suffer, Others Soar in First Half

The three big newsweeklies have struggled in the past six months, seeing declining readership, while smaller competitors such as The Week and The Economist are seeing gains. Time‘s redesign and change in distribution schedule have failed to stem the losses being experienced on the newsstand, and indeed the magazine’s newsstand sales fell 13.6 percent to 103,204 in the first six months, writes MediaPost.

That’s a total circulation decline of 17.1 percent, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Total average readership fell 4.5 percent from spring 2005 to spring 2007, per figures from Mediamark Research Inc. Newsweek saw a 9.3 percent decline in newsstand sales since the first half of 2006, to 100,902, and a 9 percent drop in readership since 2005. U.S. News & World Report saw a 6 percent decline in newsstand, and nearly a 20 percent decline in total readership.
Ad pages for Newsweek and Time saw slight declines in the first months of 2007 over the same period in 2006. However, ad pages for U.S. News & World Report were up by 5.8 percent.

On the other hand, The Economist’s newsstand sales jumped 10.6 percent in the first half of 2007, to 60,877, while subscriptions grew 16.1 percent to 694,345. Ad pages grew 13.3 percent. The Week saw a 12 percent increase in subscriptions to 493,560, and ad pages in the first half of 2007 rose 11.4 percent.