Another Way to Think About Those Circ Numbers

Whatever explanation you favor for the alarming drop in magazine newsstand sales reported earlier this week -- depressed consumer spending, heightened internet usage, wholesaler struggles -- there's probably some validity to it. And here's another factor that's been somewhat overlooked: the absence of any hot new titles to offset the decline.

For the past decade, at least, there's always been some crop of fast-growing newcomers whose massive gains helped to spackle over the year-over-year losses posted by fading giants such as TV Guide and Better Homes & Gardens. Most recently, it was the celebrity weeklies; before that, there were the "new sisters," modern women's service titles like O, The Oprah Magazine and Real Simple; and before that came Maxim and its imitators.

But now new launches are way down, especially at the mass end of the size scale. Portfolio is just about the only big launch from a major publisher in the past two years, and business magazines, however successful, are seldom big newsstand sellers.

It's hard to imagine that the era of blockbuster launches is truly over. But if the magazine industry has a Next Big Thing waiting in the wings, I've yet to see any indications of it.