Condé Nast Portfolio
Home > Views > Blogs > Mixed Media > 'PC Magazine' Crossing the Digital-Only Frontier
EMAIL
PRINT
RSS
SHARE
TEXT SIZE:
SHARE
Send a copy to me

Separate multiple email addresses (max 20) with commas.

0/1500

Main
Number Crunch: Downsizing at the Bus...   AMI Chief Asks Employees to Back Aut...
Nov 19 2008 12:25PM EST

'PC Magazine' Crossing the Digital-Only Frontier

A lot of magazines that have shut down in the past couple years, from Premiere to Playgirl, have used the fig leaf of continued online-only publication to claim that they're not really shutting down.

That's not what PC Magazine is doing, says Ziff Davis Media CEO Jason Young.

Yes, PC's print edition is going away, starting in January. But Young insists it's the culmination of a seven-year plan to move the brand to where readers want it -- and, not incidentally, to where it's already making most of its money.

"It became clear to us all the way back in 2000-2001 that the migration of our customer base, both readers and advertisers, to digital was going to happen real quickly," he says. "You have to understand where the customer demand resides and embrace it. That was the philosophy of Bill Ziff," the company's founder.

For most magazines, a full transition to web publication is hampered by simple math: There's just not enough web advertising to support the same level of operation. But Young says the PC Magazine brand is already bringing in 70 percent of its revenue on the digital side, accounting for 80 percent of the brand's profit. And, yes, he says, PC Magazine is still profitable as a print proposition, although that was anticipated to change in the next few months as a result of the drastic downturn in ad spending. "This was the right point to do this," says Young.

As PCmag.com's audience has been growing (at a rate of 33 percent a year, according to Young), the print readership has been shrinking fast, with circulation plunging from 1.23 million in 2003 to about 575,000 in the first half of this year. Thanks to the gradual pullback from print and the healthy buildup of online revenues, Ziff Davis will only have to lay off seven people as part of the transition, none of them in content-producing roles.

"This is so different from what many other magazines are facing right now," says Young. "We're able to make this decision having fully developed, scaled and grown a digital business that can fully absorb the brand's position, cost structure and audience going forward."

See more in

Loading...
Add Your Comment
View
 

Thank you for registering as a Portfolio.com Insider. Your comment has been added.

Create Your Public Profile


Archive

Previous
Jul
2009
Next


Also in Portfolio.com
Most Read
Most Emailed
Recently Commented

Newsletter Sign-Up
Inside Portfolio.com
In This Issue
Subscribe
Newsletter Sign-Up
Inside Portfolio.com
In This Issue
Subscribe