The performance of the Women’s Weeklies segment of magazines in newsagencies is a good indicator of overall health of the magazine category. I am seeing sales data which indicates that the year on year decline of 10% and more which we experienced in January through March has slowed. The more recent average year on year performance from a small group of stores over recent weeks has been 2%. While the period is short and the dataset is small, I am watching to see is this is the trend. I’d be interested in sales results from others.
The Women’s Weeklies segment includes key high volume titles: New Idea, Woman’s Day, Take 5, That’s Life, NW, Who, OK! and Famous.
Pretty good assessment!
Although I cannot gives you % figures I can give you data from this year
New Idea, Worst affected Down by more than 10%
Woman’s Day, No Change
Take 5, No change
That’s Life, No change
NW- suprisingly no change
TV Week- small growth
Who- errattic
OK! Small growth
Famous (3.50 price) Largest growth more than 10%
Performance YTD for Weeklies: UP 1%
New Idea -9%
Womans Day -11%
Take 5 +37%
Thats Life +17%
NW -30%
TV Week -2%
Who -48%
OK +28%
Famous -10%