More on Gender and Magazines
November 26th, 2008, 9 Comments »
Last year I complained about a periodical incursion–how magazines for men were increasingly being annexed by magazines targeted at a female audience. I was down at Pharmasave today, and snapped this photo of this ongoing trend (click for a bigger version):
I couldn’t get the whole newsstand in, but this is certainly representative. You can find a smattering of men’s interest magazines on the top shelf, but that’s really it. And most are buried in the third or fourth row, the way girlie magazines used to be.
I’m not actually lobbying that men deserve more shelf space. It’s pure economics. Consider this table from the Magazine Publishers of America. Of the top 50 magazines sold in 2007, only three could be considered primarily of interest to men (by my count, two others might qualify as appealing equally to both genders). The top male interest magazine, Men’s Health, is in the 17th spot, with a single copy circulation of 544,054. Cosompolitan, the top magazine, has a circulation of 1,882,061.
Men just aren’t buying magazines. Or, more accurately, women are buying a lot more magazines than men.