After 131 years, Ladies’ Home Journal is shutting down as a magazine. But moving forward, the venerable brand won’t disappear entirely. It will live on as a quarterly, newsstand-only publication and on the web.
To wit: On Thursday morning, Meredith Corporation executives announced that they are transforming Ladies’ Home Journal from a traditional monthly magazine into what the demure Iowa-based company calls a “special interest publication” or SIP. The change will result in roughly 35 layoffs, according to a company spokesperson.
SIPs, also known as bookazines, magalogues, or magabooks, are glossy publications filled with ads and low-cost, evergreen content (often recycled from Meredith’s other publications) and sold on newsstands. Whereas Meredith’s magazines are published on a regular schedule, sent to subscribers, and have a limited newsstand life, SIPs are printed on demand and can be sold on newsstands for months. Ladies’ Home Journal now joins Meredith’s robust (if largely unheralded) roster of 100 or so such titles, including Decor, American Patchwork & Quilting, and Chicken Dinners.
In a conference call on Thursday morning, Meredith CEO Stephen Lacy told analysts the change was a reaction to flagging demand from advertisers, not consumers. Until today, the magazine still enjoyed a circulation of more than 3 million monthly readers. But ad revenue has been plummeting. In 2013, Ladies’ Home Journal generated an estimated $152 million in ad revenue, down 13.9 percent versus the year before, according to the Association of Magazine Media.
Lacy, again:
“Ladies’ Home Journal…has been challenged from an advertising perspective in particular, primarily due to its higher than normal, if you will, median age, which takes it out of a number of the buys. The objective here, and the strategy here, is to continue to make the brand available to the individual consumer who has been loyal to Ladies’ Home Journal. By moving it to a newsstand-only publication it basically significantly eliminates any advertising dependency and a lot of the costs that go along with creating that business.”
It’s an ignominious fate for a magazine which Meredith acquired in 1985 from Family Media for $90 million. During the acquisition (by far, the company’s largest at the time), many insiders at Meredith were aghast that the company would bring on board the arch rival of Better Homes & Gardens, according to Meredith: The First 100 Years.
Now, nearly three decades later, the friendly in-house rivalry has come to an end. Moving forward, Ladies’ Home Journal will take its place alongside a new set of in-house competitors at the newsstand.
Move over, Chicken Dinners.
