• Ad Age, Monday, May 21, 2007 11 AM

While much of the attention paid to Condé Nast's Portfolio ponders its impact on old-guard business books, like Forbes, Fortune and BusinessWeek, market trends suggest a shakeout could be coming and the smaller, scrappier players may feel it worse than the established mags.

For instance, Business 2.0 already saw its ad pages drop 7.7% in 2005 and 5.1% last year. And this year, it is off more than 30% through the May issue. And it isn't just Portfolio that some established business titles must contend with, but legions of young digital outlets drilling into all kinds of business subjects. So print pubs are facing competition from all sides, while advertisers cry out for complex multimedia deals, which could mean change is on the way.

"It's happened before," says Brad Adgate, senior vice president-director of research, Horizon Media, as he cites the closure of multiple teen magazines last week. "But Fortune, Forbes and BusinessWeek have been around since the 1920s and '30s, so I'd be surprised if one of them went anywhere."

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