ABCs: Weekly magazines struggle with Zoo leading declines
The weekly magazine market failed to stabilise during the October to December period last year, with titles such as Zoo Weekly, OK! all experiencing double-digit drops again after posting similar declines in the previous audit period.
The biggest fall in the latest round of figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations which take in the last three months of 2013 was Bauer Media Group’s men’s title Zoo Weekly with a 34.90 per cent decline.
Media analyst from Fusion Strategy Steve Allen told Mumbrella: “The big story in magazines is not one single weekly magazine managed to stabilise circulation. Most of them had quite minor losses, threes and fours, and that’s good, but none of them have managed to stabilise or turn it around.”
I was once involved with Zoo and was told it had to sell 70K to break even (as there was never a whole lot of ad support.) Now it’s doing half that it must be bleeding money for Bauer and you’d have to say will soon be given the last rites.
Zoo has cut costs substantially, but it’s hard to see it sticking around.
I do like Matt Stanton celebrating the fact that their website is number one in a category that it’s alone in.