What the closings
say about magazines
Typically it's the weak titles that get the axe
By Diego Vasquez
Oct 6, 2009
For months everyone has known that the axe was going to fall at Condé Nast. The question was where, and yesterday came the answer: Gourmet, Elegant Bride, Modern Bride and Cookie. The publishing company said it will close those titles after analyzing the results of a three-month audit by the consulting company McKinsey & Co. Condé Nast closed Domino, Portfolio and Men's Vogue already in the past year. The publisher, which has also instituted budget cuts at a number of magazines, will increase the frequency of Brides magazine, the category leader, to account for the closure of the other two magazines. But it's Gourmet's end that's leaving a bad taste in many people's mouths. The 68-year-old magazine saw ad pages dip by nearly half in the first half of the year, according to the Publishers Information Bureau, but many had expected sister magazine Bon Appétit, which has a shorter history, to be the one cut if any of the food magazines had to go. That's perhaps the lesson of these closures: Even strong brands are vulnerable in this economy. Roberta Garfinkle, senior vice president and director of print strategy at TargetCast tcm, talks to Media Life about why Gourmet's closure is surprising, why Cookie's is not, and why the bridal category probably won't be affected one way or another.
Why do you think Condé Nast chose these specific magazines to shutter?
I think it’s easy when you get to everything but Gourmet.
Condé Nast being a publisher of three bridal books, somewhere in your portfolio do you really need multiple titles?
I think Cookie, while it’s wonderful, it probably launched at an inopportune time. The luxury market is going through some problems.
Keeping Bon Appétit alive instead of Gourmet is probably because it’s probably more sustainable. But why do you fold Gourmet and not one of your beauty/fashion titles? It’s got to come down to an economic decision, and maybe between Gourmet and Cookie those are the most expensive to produce, but we’ll probably never know that.
Were there other Condé Nast magazines that survived the axe that surprised you?
Well, one of the surprises was with their stable of women’s beauty and fashion titles that they wouldn’t have chosen one or more of those to go. That surprises me a bit, but without knowing the numbers behind it I can’t really say.
What, if anything, do these closures tell us about the health of the bridal, epicurean and parenting categories?
Well, that’s just it. Starting with Cookie, there are well-established parenting titles in the marketplace and Cookie came along before the economy tanked, and it was a different spin on parenting books. It’s much more upscale and fashion-focused, and then the world changed, so I can understand folding a title in these economic times.
For the bridal titles, as a publisher with three titles that are competing with each other, is that the smartest way to be? It was seem to me no, you don’t need that many.
And then you get into Gourmet, it competes with both Bon Appétit as well as Condé Nast Traveler. At one point in time I think I saw that Gourmet actually had more travel ad pages the Traveler did.
But they’ve got seven women’s titles, I’m almost surprised that W wasn’t one of the books to go. I’ve been reading some stuff about how bad that world is right now because it’s such an upscale environment.
Condé Nast has two well-known food magazines, Gourmet and Bon Apetit, which was spared. How, if at all, do you see Gourmet's closure impacting Bon Apetit?
Well I think it’s good for Bon Appétit and in some perverse way it’s good for the category. If one of the big books in a category folds, the assumption is that advertisers, if they weren’t using other titles, would go to Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, or one of the other titles.
But I don’t know what that represents in terms of overall business. You may have an advertiser who was using all three, and now they may go outside the category, somewhere else to reach their target audience.
How will the bridal closures affect the bridal category going forward?
I don’t think it will affect it. You know if you’re an advertiser—the bridal category was really dominated for a long time by Bride’s and Modern Bride. I think it might bode well for books like Martha Stewart Weddings and some of the other titles, but that’s such a limited market place, you’re either in it or you’re not.
Wondertime and now Cookie, two more upscale parenting magazines, have now been closed. Was it simply a case of bad timing, or is there little interest in this parenting subcategory?
I think it’s bad timing. Who knows when the economy is going to turn around like this.
We've seen a lot of magazine closures over the past year. Do you think there are more high-profile titles to come, or will we see the shutdowns slow a bit as the recovery begins?
That’s what concerns me about this.
In the business we’ve always seen the weak titles fold, it’s the weakest that fail. But now we’re starting to see some strong titles fail.
It’s not always about ad pages, it’s about the readers. There are people out there that love these magazines and don’t know they’re off 43 percent in ad pages and it doesn’t matter to them.
That’s what was sad about House & Garden years ago, and now with Gourmet, they’re folding these really strong titles, at least titles that are strong to the reader.
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