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‘Time’ Reduces Rate Base, Redesigns, Raises Price

Time and the other major news magazines have long engaged in a fierce rivalry, with Time having a strong lead over the others - however, that lead has been narrowing in recent months. Now, in a move to maintain its lead, Time editors are working on a redesign that will launch in January. The magazine’s newsstand price will also rise in January, from $3.95 to $4.95.

Time also plans to cut its rate base by 18.8 percent, beginning in January, to 3.25 million, writes The New York Times. It also wants to persuade advertisers to switch to a different way of paying for ads, based not on the rate base but on the total number of magazine readers, including pass-along readers. Based on that number, Time says it has 19.5 million readers.

Time’s publisher, Edward R. McCarrick, says that Time’s number of readers has not gone down. Rather, the magazine will stop including people who received magazines through channels other than subscriptions and newsstands, such as magazines sponsored by advertisers or sent out unrequested.

Earlier this year, the Audit Bureau of Circulations began requiring that magazines break down so-called “public place” copies - the number of magazines in their circulation that are delivered to places such as doctors’ offices. Time’s number for that designation was 350,623 out of about 4.1 million magazines sold in the first half of the year.

Rival Newsweek did not have such copies to report.

McCarrick says the move to cut Times’ rate base is “really bold and direct, which is throwing down the gauntlet.”

In September, Time was reported to have been considering eliminating its rate base altogether, which was apparently too bold of a move.

Time’s circulation was up about 1.2 percent in the first half of this year compared with 2005, while Newsweek’s circulation fell 1.8 percent, to about 3.1 million, according to the article.

Time has fought to maintain its lead by appointing a new managing editor earlier in the year, and shifting its on-sale day from Monday to Friday.Last November, in an informal poll, media buyers predicted that one of the three main newsweeklies - Time, Newsweek or U.S. News & World Report - would eventually vanish.