US celebrity titles defying circulation drop

Posted by Jeffrey Blyth on 28 February 2006 at 10:50
Tags: Journalism, Magazines, United States

One group of magazines in the United States that is defying the trend of declining sales and a drop-off in ads are the celebrity-oriented weeklies.

The circulation of Us was up almost 13 per cent in the last six months of 2005 and topped 1.6 million. In Touch did even better — up more than 15 per cent. Star magazine climbed over 12 per cent. Only People, which long been regarded as the most successful magazine in the US in any category, was only up slightly over 1 per cent but still outsold the others with an average of just under 3.7 million copies a week.

One of the big surprises in the latest figures is the drop of almost 10 per cent in the sales of O — the magazine of chat show host Oprah Winfrey — probably because the magazine recently raised its subscription rate. But it still remains one of the biggest sellers with an average of 2.4 million each issue.

The drop in sales, the magazine claims, had nothing to do with Oprah’s endorsement of a book by a confessed drug addict James Frey which subsequently turned out to be more fiction that fact. Equally Martha Stewart’s prison spell (for a Wall Street trading offence) did not, it seems, affect sales of her magazine. Martha Stewart Living reported an increase in sales of more than 4 per cent.

Only the newsweeklies and most business magazines remained flat. Time and Newsweek were both down a small percentage. Condé Nast publications did pretty well. Vanity Fair was up 8 per cent, the New Yorker and Vogue both up around 3 per cent. Cosmopolitan, probably America’s best-known women’s magazine, rose a modest 0.8 per cent. But still it sold an enviable average of just over 3 million copies each month.