• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, July 10, 2009

The second quarter didn't bring any improvement in the fortunes of consumer magazines, which saw ad pages plunge 29.4% compared to the same period last year, from 60,721 to 42,841, according to the Publisher's Information Bureau. While not completely unexpected, this bad news dims the prospects for recovery later this year.

At this rate, 2009 is shaping up to be the worst year for consumer magazines since 1932, when total revenues dropped 30%.

Of course it's possible the steep declines in the first half of the year will be offset by smaller losses in the second half, but this becomes less likely in light of the continuing downward trend. The latest PIB figures represent the ninth straight quarterly decline for consumer magazines, marking over two years of uninterrupted losses. This is virtually unprecedented: Over seven decades between the Great Depression and now, consumer magazines never experienced two consecutive years of declines -- but they now appear to be suffering their third.

Even more alarming, the rate of decline appeared to be accelerating in the second quarter, furthering a long-term trend.

Between the second quarter of 2007 and the second quarter of 2009, magazines have posted quarterly, year-over-year declines in ad pages of 2.1%, 2.3%, 0.2%, 6.3%, 8.3%, 12.9%, 17.2%, 26.1%, and 29.4%, respectively. The losses have grown from isolated declines affecting only certain categories to an industry-wide freefall.

Out of 250 leading titles tracked by PIB, only 11 saw ad pages increase in the second quarter: Cooking with Paula Deen (up 0.2%), Country Weekly (8.4%), Family Circle (8.2%), Fitness (18.4%), Muscle & Fitness (16%), OK Weekly (16.6%), Organic Gardening (3.2%), People Style Watch (15.9%), Scholastic Parent & Child (2.5%), Sports Illustrated Kids (2.1%), and The Week (11.3%).

There were also 18 titles that closed or didn't submit data for the second quarter. Thus 221 magazines -- 88% of the titles tracked by PIB -- saw ad pages decline in the second quarter.

In order of magnitude, some of the biggest percentage drops for the year to date, covering the first half of 2009, have come at Architectural Digest (down 49.5%), Boating (49%), Wired (47.6%), Gourmet (46.1%), W (44.2%), Life & Style Weekly (44.1%), Dwell (43.1%), Town & Country (42.9%), Conde Nast Traveler (42.4%), Teen Vogue (40.8%), Men's Journal (38.4%), Fortune (38.2%), Details (37.3%), Southern Accents (37.4%), Business Week (36.8%), Automobile Magazine (36.6%), Latina (35.8%), Maxim (35.8%), Real Simple (35.6%), Vanity Fair (35.2%), Bon Appetit (34.5%), Fast Company (33.6%), New York (33.5%), National Geographic (33.2%), Allure (32.4%), Autoweek (32.1%), Entertainment Weekly (31.9%), GQ (31.8%), Road & Track (31.8%), Metropolitan Home (31.4%), Motor Trend (31.3%), Vogue (31%), Money (30.5%) and Forbes (30.2%).