• by August 9, 2001

As reported in the latest issue of MediaThink, a service of Media Dynamics Inc., the adult population is slowly aging and it is important for publishers and media buyers to keep tabs on magazine audience profiles. Clearly, the readers of some titles (and genres) are aging faster than the population as a whole, while other publications have proven to be successful in keeping a better hold on their younger constituencies.

Media Dynamics’ latest study of the magazine industry, Magazine Dimensions 2002, found that the median age of the adult audiences for 54 magazines measured between 1988 and 2001 rose 13%, as opposed to the median age of the general population, while rose only 8% in the same time period. However, automotive magazines found their readership aging at a more accelerated rate (23%) during this period, while women’s fashion books were able to capture enough teens as they moved into young adulthood to run counter to the aging trend (their readership aged only 6% over this 13-year interval).

The book-by-book aging figures are even more dramatic, particularly for some of the long-established women’s, sports enthusiast, home service, newsweekly, outdoor and science/nature titles.

Media Dynamics says that "while this does not necessarily mean that such publications are bad advertising buys, their editors must be concerned about their inability to woo the emerging younger age segments that now, of course, get much of their information and news from the Internet."