The Magazine Publishers of America today (July 12, 2010) released their Q1 2010 survey of magazine advertising pages (April through June 2010 vs 2009) and this time it looks like the death spiral has stopped. Print ad pages were actually up .8 percent against the same quarter in 2009.
At Bonnier Corporation’s Transworld Media it is a bit of a different story. All of Transworld’s titles (unfortunately, the only action sports publications tracked by the MPA) continued their downward slide–some more than others.
2010 2009 % Change TRANSWORLD SURF 221.03 230.67 -4.2 TRANSWORLD MOTOCROSS 237.00 248.71 -4.7 TRANSWORLD SNOWBOARDING 46.67 52.84 -11.7 TRANSWORLD SKATEBOARDING 220.51 334.67 -34.1 RIDE BMX 45.00 127.33 -64.7
According to the MPA report page losses at TransWorld Surf the magazine that saw a 22.6 percent drop in Q1 has slowed to only 4.2 percent. Transworld Skateboarding page losses, however, have accelerated from 20.2 in Q1 to 34.1 percent in Q2.
One industry observer compared the first half of 2008 to the first half of 2010 and put it this way: “Transworld Skateboarding has gone from 802 ad pages to 463 in just two years.”
Transworld isn’t home to Bonnier’s only drops. Wakeboarding Magazine is down 32.6 percent for the quarter and Ski and Skiing, the two titles that were down in the mid double digits in Q1 2010, are missing from the Q2 reports.
[Link: Magazine Publisher of America]
