The Canadian magazine industry is still ailing.
According to the latest report released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), readership is still suffering a decline, with paid and verified circulation and single-copy sales taking a hit at the conclusion of 2009.
A small consolation – if you could call it that – is that the drops in both categories have slowed to the low single digits: total paid and verification readership in Dec. 2009 was down 3.78%, or 269,877 fewer readers (paid subscribers slumped to 3.25%, or 180,382 readers) compared with Dec. 2008, while ABC reports 4.34%, or 53,494 fewer consumers, bought newsstand copies.
While still somewhat grim, both figures show improvement over the 2008-over-2007 stats, where year-to-year paid/verification numbers were down 5.29% and single-copy sales plummeted a whopping 23.63%.
The title to bear the brunt of the biggest paid subscription drop was Profit, which lost 91.2% and watched its subscription base plummet to 436. Flare also took a 16.4% hit, as did the Canadian Wildlife Federation mag Wild, with a 17.8% loss. In single-copy sales, the three largest newsstand losers were Montreal publications Montreal Centre-Ville with a 71% decrease; Fleures Plants Jardins losing 51% of its spontaneous sales, and Elle Canada reeling from a 44.6% blow. The economy also took a single-copy sales bite out of Today’s Parent (24.9%), Canadian Reader’s Digest English edition (23.5%); Chatelaine English edition (18.4%), Fashion (16.8%) and Maclean‘s (14.8%).
However, Maclean‘s staff had a reason to celebrate: paid subscriptions jumped 13.4% in 2009, the third-best increase in Canada in 2009. Hello! led the new subscription intake with a whopping 65.9% leap into the black, and Star Inc. enjoyed a sizeable 19.4% increase.
Gaining significant traction in single-copy sales were Canadian Business with a 78% newsstand jump; L’Actualite with a 53.4% increase; Flare compensating a little for its subscription loss with a soaring 43.3% increase and The Beaver (which will relaunch as Canada’s History in April) building a 30.4% gain.
Shopping magazine LouLou continued to improve with a 27.4% surge in single-copy sales of its English edition, although it was outgunned by its French-language counterpart that shone with an increase of 46.2%.
The circulation report, issued by ABC, covers the six-month period ending Dec. 31, 2009 and includes a comparison for a similar reporting period the year before.
