In this weak economy, magazines must struggle to hold onto advertisers, but they are also struggling on the circulation side of the business as consumers continue to hold back on discretionary spending.

Not only were newsstand sales down nearly 10 percent in the last six months of 2009, a handful of big-name titles failed to meet the number of copies they've guaranteed advertisers.

For those six months, among the titles that failed to meet rate base were Reader's Digest, Playboy, Harper's, In Touch, First for Women, OK!, Star, Ebony and Jet.

Reader's Digest delivered a circulation of 7,099,558 against a rate base of 8 million; Playboy 2,021,751 against 2.6 million; Harper's 195,114 against 200,000; In Touch 790,395 against 800,000; First for Women 1,251,821 against 1.35 million; OK! 753,886 against 800,000; Star 1,035,713 against 1,100,000; Ebony 1,169,109 against 1,250,000; and Jet 795,035 against 900,000.

In all, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, of the 400-plus titles tracked, 206 reported paid and verified rate bases, and of that number 24 missed their rate base. That's one more than for the year-earlier period.

Publishers of those titles who were willing to be quoted blamed the harsh economy.

"The reality is we’ve been in a recession, and I think people have certainly cut back on their purchase patterns, and that has affected newsstand sales in general," Ian Scott, president of Bauer Media, which publishes First for Women and In Touch, tells Media Life.

"Also we increased our prices by 50 percent the year before, and that affects sales as well. So there’s a multitude of reasons. Hopefully with the economy starting to show some signs of improvement, it makes you more confident about the future."

In a number of cases, the affected publications were already in the process of cutting their rate bases.

Star is lowering its rate base from 1,100,000 to 925,000, effective the April 12 issue.

Back in October, Playboy announced it was chopping its rate base from 2.6 million to 1.5 million as of this current issue, the January-February issue.

In June, Reader's Digest said it was cutting its rate base from 8 million to 5.5 million as of the February 2010 issue, and also cutting frequency to 10 issues a year from 12.

But in two cases, OK! and Harper's, the titles failed to meet even reduced rate bases. Back in July, Harper's cut its circulation to 200,000 but missed that lower base by some 5,000 copies.

Back in August, OK! said it was reducing its rate base from 900,000 to 800,000, retroactive from the July 6, 2009 issue, but it missed that lower number by some 50,000, coming in at 753,886 for the six-month reporting period.

In cases where a publication fails to meet rate base, the publisher typically agrees to make good to the advertisers.

Explains magazine consultant Marty Walker: "Usually only the large national advertisers and their agencies are aware of missed rate bases. When confronted or when a publisher comes clean upfront there is usually some sort of 'make good' either in terms of a refund or a credit against future advertising based on the rate base shortfall."