WHAT 2009 HOLDS FOR THE MAG INDUSTRY

The Guardian did a series of analyses of media industries looking at the likely outcomes for 2009. In this article they predicted:

• larger publishers (there's none bigger than Bauer in the UK) will be relatively fine; its the Indies, without opportunities for cross-subsidy (profit-making titles supporting loss-makers), that will struggle to survive
• advertising income will slump BUT perhaps not so much for the glossies - part of the mystique of high-end brands comes with their use of prominent ad campaigns in glossy mags; if they stop advertising in these they risk losing out to rivals [however: rem the example of Vogue: the largest pagination for any magazine ever in 2008, but a huge fall in this by 2009]
• niche titles will be okay: advertisers simply won't have much option but to continue to target these titles
• mass- and mid-market titles will suffer more as here advertisers have much greater choice
• B2B (business-to-business) titles will suffer (note that Bauer focusses on consumer magazines, not B2B). Reed-Elsevier was forced to abandon the attempted sale of its B2B wing, finding no takers [DB: even the media can't sustain their own publication: The Press Gazette has been shut down]

The recession is forcing all publishers to look again at the possibilities for making online content pay - but this remains an issue they haven't resolved. While The Financial Times has successfully operated fees for its online content - and The Sunday Times is about to try the same - magazines, with competition from e-zines too lets not forget - haven't been able to make this work. Yet...