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Newsstand Sales Drop for Newsweeklies

As newsstand sales of newsweeklies dropped in the first half of 2005, celebrity title newsstand sales have increased, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. People and Us Weekly, for example, gained in single-copy sales, while Time newsstand sales dropped 3.4 percent from last year and Newsweek’s single-copy sales plummeted 14 percent from last year, writes Mediaweek. However, total circulation for Time and Newsweek rose slightly, and newsstand sales account for only a small percentage of overall sales for those titles, while celebrity mags depend greatly on those single-copy sales.

Newsweekly publishers say that newsstand sales run in cycles - last year, numbers were strong thanks to the presidential race, the Summer Olympic Games, and the death of Ronald Reagan.

 

But newsweeklies have also seen huge declines in advertising this year. Through their Sept. 5 issues, Time ad pages fell 21.1 percent to 1,295 compared to last year, reports the Mediaweek Monitor. Newsweek was off 18.6 percent with 1,134 pages, and U.S. News dropped 3.5 percent, selling 1,076 pages. U.S. News’ president and publisher Bill Holiber blames the decline, in part, on softness in tech advertising. Tech ads industry-wide this July were off 6.8 percent from July of last year, according to Publishers Information Bureau. He predicts, though, that a spate of launches out of Detroit will feed ad pages from automakers.