Saturday Evening Post Continues Revival

When media pundits talk about the Saturday Evening Post, they usually toss around phrases like "well-evolved" and "hearkening back to a simpler era." In other words, they're trying to say, as euphemistically as possible, "this is an old publication for an older audience."

Despite the supposed reluctance of advertisers to embrace any title that doesn't appeal to 32-year-old males, however, The Saturday Evening Post has not changed its message or mission. In fact, executive publisher Bob Silvers - who has been with the title since its 1971 revival - embraces the magazine's reputation.

"Admittedly, we have an older audience, but mostly you hear us described as 'an American Institution,'" he says. "I can't see how that isn't a good thing, and I can't see why we'd change a formula that works."

The Saturday Evening Post formula, unbeknownst to many young'uns in the media community, emphasizes health and medical information ("we're kind of a layperson's medical journal," Silvers quips) over nostalgia. While there is more than a little bit of the latter - each issue includes reproductions of classic Post covers, and the mag is probably one of the few that counts an archivist among its personnel - the Post has evolved into one of the leading health publications in the country. For this reason alone, it has become a favorite of pharma advertisers.

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"Even though we're not a health publication per se, we provide a good environment for health companies," Silvers says. Of course, given the mag's most recent Publishers Information Bureau numbers, the Post is luring significantly more than pharma advertisers: between January and June 2003, the title is up 31.5% in ad pages and 29.6% in ad revenue over the same period in 2002. While the Post's overall numbers may not be TV Guide-ish (131.1 ad pages and $1.6 million in ad revenue in the first six months of 2003), mid-double-digit growth at a time when many similar publications are flailing can't be shrugged off.

The challenge, of course, is convincing advertisers to look past the Post's supposedly unfavorable demographics. The mag's average reader is 53 (split 60/40 between women and men), with a household income in the upper $40,000s. While recent MRI data shows that the Post has what Silvers calls "wonderful pass-along readership" - nine readers per copy - the magazine is a nonentity on the newsstand, with 93% of its circulation coming from subscribers. "Newsstand distributors don't have much use for bimonthlies anymore," Silvers says plainly. "Single-copy sales are a thing of the past for us."

The problem with this, of course, is that as the Post's readers continue to age, new readers might not be there to pick up the slack. Yes, the magazine's renewal rate exceeds 60%, but how much longer can it last? "That's out of our control," Silvers says. "We've stuck to what our mission is - to get a health message out to the public - while still maintaining the features of the old Saturday Evening Post that our subscribers embrace. That's our priority."

Looking forward, Silvers has marketing on his mind. He says that the Post would "like to get back into the automobile business" as well as snag more advertisers like recent addition Kraft. "The old Saturday Evening Post and the auto industry grew up together," he says. "We struggle to get automotive ads because, frankly, our numbers aren't big enough to attract them. They are going after a younger audience with higher income."

Regardless of this unusually candid self-assessment, Silvers and his staff remain fiercely proud of the Post and its loyal readership. "I remember back in the beginning when [editor in chief] Dr. [Cory] SerVaas asked me to sell ads," he recalls. "I told her 'I don't know what I'm doing,' but she responded 'that's alright, we don't know what we're doing, either.'" He laughs, then adds, "We've all come a long way together."

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