The ABCs: what they really tell us
Statistics. Don’t cha just love 'em? We know they sell advertising – we quote them when we sleep – but how often do you look at the stats for magazines that you don’t sell or compete with? We take a less-than-serious look at the ABCs for consumer magazines for our ‘State of the Nation’ review.
All figures quoted are from the 2006 figures for Total Average Net Circulation Per Issue, unless otherwise stated.
A nation of slobs
Looking purely at paid-for titles, it’s an undeniable fact that we’re lazy old couch potatoes. IPC’s What’s on TV [1,437,650] is the number 1 loafers aid, closely followed by TV Choice [1,353,436] from H Bauer and the good old Radio Times [1,071,066]. Not forgetting to mention the 7 million+ subscribers reading Sky the magazine.
H Bauer knows its Brits well, when we’re a little tired from deciding what to watch on the box, they’ve hit the nail on the head with our next best national occupation: Take a Break [1,027,013].
It’s no great surprise that the next several most-sold magazines are the Women's Weeklies – EMAP’s Closer [614,141] and Heat [598,623] lead the gossiping pack, with OK!, Now and Chat also breaking the half million copies barrier. Nor that SAGA magazine is just as popular with over 595,000 subscription and newsstand sales – more power to the wrinklies!
On a slight tangent, you may have read our recent Social Networking feature... Sites like MySpace are largely aimed at the young, but you can now tell your Nan that SAGA have just launched SAGA Zone: a brand new service where she can discover new people with similar interests and easily stay in touch. After creating her own page featuring a personal profile and interests, in the coming weeks, Nanna will be able to start your own blog, post and share pictures, and much more...
How do you like your tits?
EMAP have got the boys sussed too with FHM [371,263] leading the pack, followed by Nuts [295,002] from IPC. Natmags are effectively preying on those couch potatoes’ consciences with Men’s Health following in third place [238,568]. However, these stats all pale into insignificance compared with a stonking performance from raunchy title ‘Birds’ [621,198] from the RSPB.
The Fortean Times (the Journal of Strange Phenomena from Dennis Publishing) attracts the same number of readers [23,776] as The Tablet [23,628] - the British Catholic weekly newspaper.
Modern girls are more concerned with their hairstyles [318,936 copies sold across 5 titles] than parenting [260,633 copies across 7 titles].
And Tatler (Conde Nast) has a very similar subscription rate to good old Viz magazine (Dennis): that's 16,603 ‘keep up with the neighbours’ types waiting for the letterbox to rattle vs. 16,097 english bull terrier owners chuffed with another opportunity to terrify the postman each month.
Home sweet home
They say that an Englishman’s home is his castle. Apart from the free Homebase Ideas magazine [422,875], it doesn’t seem so – the three specialist DIY titles audited are all below the 35,000 circulation mark.
Unless, of course, you chaps are all keeping it nice and simple – the BBC’s two Bob the Builder titles have a combined circulation of just below 114,000 – the top children’s character property.
No wonder 2 in 5 marriages end in divorce – women are buying 2,208,463 home interest magazines a month – talk about desperate housewives!
It appears that an Englishman’s castle is actually his caravan with The Caravan Club boasting over 350,000 members reading their free magazine and three of the paid-for publications in this 8-title-strong sector comfortably beating the DIY mags’ figures.
Food for thought
If you look at overall circulation, the free supermarket mags win hands down (watching TV all the time obviously makes us hungry). The happy bum slappers at Asda come top [2,836,227] followed by Tesco’s readers [2,419,083]. Jamie’s big-tongue-loving fans reading Sainsburys Fresh Ideas [1,473,800] trail way behind.
For every ten people taking home a free supermarket magazine, spare a thought for the one hungry and frustrated reader wondering if her (or his!) Slimming World [255,237] or Weightwatchers [244,231] magazine is edible...
Her husband, meanwhile, is more likely to be sat in the loo happily perusing his latest copy of MQ (Masonic Quarterly) [239,157], than either Computeractive [216,031] – the best-selling computing magazine from VNU – or Private Eye [208,979] (which happens to be The Friday Pint team’s toilet read of choice), who’d have thought... |
