41 million readers and 82.8 pages of ad content per issue
Over the last few months I have grown quite fond of reading the New York Times; in the Las Vegas community where I live (Summerlin), the NYT is the only daily available at the news stand that’s halfway decent. The Las Vegas Review-Journal, by comparison, is horrible, relying far too much on affordable wire service reportage and leaning considerably to the right in its op-ed apparatus. The LA Times is also available where I pick up my dailies and I do buy an issue every so often but what can I say about their failures that hasn’t already been shouted from the rooftops?
The business news writing in the NYT is compelling. One of my favorite weekly sections of Business Day is the pop culture index called, appropriately, Popular Demand, a listing of the tops in broadcast television, cable, video games and DVD rentals, music downloads, and, best of all, national magazine ad buying trends.
According to the Popular Demand index for the first two weeks of November, advertising buys in the pages of Vanity Fair — standing at a whopping 137.7 pages — is down 34.4 percent. The Atlantic is reporting a 31.8 percent drop in ad buys, and the venerable Smithsonian magazine has lost 20.7 percent of their advertising. But check out this oddity … Reader’s Digest, that musty old friend to retired homemakers in middle America, reports a 22.3 percent increase in ad buys.
What’s wrong with this picture? Plenty. Readers Digest boasts the largest audience of any paid-circulation magazine at just over 41 million. They reach one out of every five adults and nearly one-quarter of all women in the U.S. The median age of an RD reader? Fifty years old. But does the demographic of the average Readers Digest consumer actually apply to the face of America any longer? Are we to believe, as the ad agencies clearly believe, that the folks who live in flyover America and who respond positively to Tidy Bowl advertising are the people who are driving the economy? I’m four months away from 50 myself, and I am acquainted with more people who read the Atlantic and the Smithsonian than Readers Digest.
I wish I had something to say, but words fail me. I’m sure Lynn’s parents subscribe, though. I think of it as a publication for ancient white-flight suburbans who think the last time it was safe to live in a city was 1955.
By: joseph on November 11, 2008
at 12:43 pm
To my way of thinking, Joseph, it simply demonstrates that Madison Avenue is as out of touch with the “real America” as the RNC is.
By: Rodger Jacobs on November 11, 2008
at 12:55 pm
The Readers Digest, 41 million readers, Wow! And I didn’t even realize it was still being published, when I think of the Readers Digest it is usually in the context of a memory, 35 years ago,on a small bookshelf in a rented cabin in the mountains when my children were toddlers, or of myself while traveling on business, and renting a cheap hotel room in someplace like Wichita Falls Texas, and the only reading materials available were the Gideon’s Bible, old Outdoor Life Magazines, and even older dusty issues of Readers Digest.
While reading through the RD it always seemed like I was in a time warp, a Twilight Zone episode, or in a foreign place that gave me the creeps, like when driving through rural Utah and the only thing on a dozen radio stations is the voice of Paul Harvey and “The Rest of the Story!”
The RD always showcased the white, rural, small town ethos of middle America, with “inspirational and patriotic” articles such as
Anita Bryant advising youngsters on the pitfalls of premarital sex, a Billy Graham semi sermon about some Vietnamese Christian Missionary tortured by the Viet Cong for teaching Western Christian Values and personal hygiene tips.
Gen Curtis LeMay warning against the insidious Communist propaganda aimed at our youth in the guise of popular Rock and Roll Music, the benefits to our country’s economy and personal health derived from the scientific development of the Hydrogen Bomb.
And as you would come to the end of the dusty issue of Readers Digest you would always be confronted with a thought provoking quote or riddle from luminaries such as Norman Vincent Peale;
“Just as there exist scientific techniques for the release of atomic energy, so are there scientific procedures for the release of spiritual energy through the mechanism of prayer… New and fresh spiritual techniques are being constantly discovered … experiment with prayer power.”
And at that point I would put down the Readers Digest, feeling like the confused, directionless, Native American Indian from the old joke; “you want to know how to get where? Hell why ask me? I’m a member of the “wheredafuckowee tribe”
By: don quixote on November 12, 2008
at 8:33 am
And let’s not forget the monthly Increase Your Brain Power column, a pronunciation and definition guide of really difficult words for middle Americans, “big” and challenging words like regurgitation and substantiation.
By: Rodger Jacobs on November 12, 2008
at 12:26 pm