Samir Husni: 'Readers Should Be Charged More For Magazines'
The noted magazine expert says magazines should be less dependent on advertising and doesn't see a rosy future for Rosie's or the New Economy titles.

I Want Media, 03/05/01

Samir Husni, a.k.a. Mr. Magazine, is a magazine industry consultant and journalism professor at the University of Mississippi. Called "the country's leading magazine expert," by Forbes ASAP, he is the author of the annual "Samir Husni's Guide to New Consumer Magazines," which will have its 16th edition published this week. I Want Media asked Husni for his thoughts on today's magazine scene.

I Want Media: For the first time in 16 years, your "Guide to New Consumer Magazines" named two titles -- American Profile and O, The Oprah Magazine -- as Launch of the Year. How come?

Samir Husni: It was so hard for us to decide. Both magazines are completely different and both are so innovative. American Profile, which is a newspaper supplement with a regional focus, reached a circulation of over 3 million in less than one year. It certainly deserved recognition. And Oprah, of course, is a giant success. The way Oprah is able to transcend age, sex and education has made it possible to successfully launch another general-interest magazine for women. We debated this for a long time and finally decided it was a tie.

IWM: Six out of the top 30 new launches in last year's edition have already folded. Considering the current climate, is this not an ideal time to launch a magazine?

Husni: If you look at the survival rate of new magazines, half of them don't survive beyond the first year. So if we follow the statistics, 15 of the 30 should have folded by now. So that's a good sign for our "notables." Is this not an ideal time to launch a magazine? I firmly believe that every day is a good time to launch a magazine if you know how to find an audience that's willing to pay for it. When Martha Stewart Living was launched in '91 we were coming out of a recession. Was that an ideal time? Fortune magazine was launched in 1930, near the start of the Depression. So there is never an ideal time. There simply has to be an ideal execution of a concept that meets a need in the marketplace.

IWM: In the new guidebook you say that new magazines will need to depend on circulation as their main source of revenue rather than advertising. Can you elaborate?

Husni: It's becoming harder and harder to depend on advertising, especially in a period of economic downturn. So magazines have to learn that it's O.K. to have a higher cover price. We have to start thinking about magazines the same way we think about books. Books are sold simply on the concept of the book, not because somebody is sponsoring it so you can get it at a lower price. When you pick up a copy of Modern Bride or Vogue you know there is a cost of more than $3.50 in producing that magazine, but advertisers have been footing the bill. New magazines don't have that leverage, except for the rare occasion like the Oprah magazine.

IWM: In the new guidebook you say that the potential of the Internet as a money maker remains untapped. How so?

Husni: It's much too soon to write off the Internet. Some magazines are experimenting with selling subscriptions and doing direct e-mail instead of direct mail. There are still a lot of possibilities. Certainly, the view that the Internet is going to somehow "take over" the magazine industry will never happen. The Internet is going to complement magazines, to help market them and sell subscriptions.

IWM: On mrmagazine.com you say: "The real information superhighway is magazines. The Internet is more or less a country road filled with dead ends, blind curves and pothole after pothole." What do you mean?

Husni: How many times when you're online do you find a Web site down? How many times do you try to go from one site to another, and the links are dead? Or the information is a year old? So far, the Internet has not proved itself to be the rose garden we were promised. Actually, we have discovered that there are a lot of thorns in that rose garden. And where can you get more information in less time and less space than in a magazine?

IWM: What are the biggest challenges facing magazines today?

Husni: The biggest challenge is how to efficiently reach the audience you're looking for. The days of marketing magazines using the shotgun approach -- where you just throw it out there and hope your audience will see it -- are long gone. We have over 5,000 magazines now, which is almost three times the amount we had just 20 years ago. And newsstand space is limited. So we need to figure out the best way for magazines to reach their specific audience. It's a major challenge. The odds of remaining in business after 10 years are 1 out of 10. Magazines are published for what I like to call the three F's of publishing: fun, fame and fortune. A lot of people find fun; sometimes they find fame. It's fortune that's been elusive.

IWM: In a report about the current advertising slowdown, Mediaweek said: "Magazines will ultimately feel a domino effect from the cuts that hit other media this year." Are magazines, as a medium, somehow particularly vulnerable?

Husni: When the economy has a downturn, all media that depend on advertising will suffer. Magazines are no different. We've had bad years before, but magazines always weather the storm and come back. Still, as long as magazines continue to depend on advertising, it means there's a variable they can't control. That's what I mean by saying readers should be charged more for magazines. It's a shame that big, established magazines in this country are willing to offer a subscription of 12 issues for $8. It says a lot of bad things about our belief that readers are willing to pay the price only if it's a mere $8. That's why the mentality has to change. Publishers need to look really hard at whether they really want give their magazine away, or if they should start charging more.

IWM: Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart have inspired magazines. Now it's Rosie O'Donnell's turn, with the revamp of McCall's starting with the April issue. Do you think Rosie's will match the success of those other two titles?

Husni: I really don't know, but I have my doubts. They're starting with a very large circulation from McCall's, so they can ride that for a while. Then it's going to be up to the magazine to establish it's own identity. But I don't believe that the readers of McCall's are the readers of Rosie's. The McCall's reader is the woman who is interested in the simple things of life: cooking, house, career. Rosie has a specific point of view that she says she's going to promote in the magazine. But now they're saying that maybe that won't be the magazine's approach. It's hard to judge it before it's out. But I can't see Rosie selling more magazines than Oprah. I'd really be surprised.

IWM: The New Economy business magazines have matched their dot-com counterparts, going from boom times to nearly bust. What's their prognosis?

Husni: They lived in a bubble for the past year, and now the bubble is bursting. One or two of them will disappear. That will definitely happen. It's happened before. We had this situation with science magazines in the '80s, the environmental magazines in the mid-'80s, and the computer magazines in the early'90s. First there is a big boom, then they start slowing down, and then they start trimming and slimming. Finally, there are just two or three magazines left serving a specific market. Remember all of those heavyweight computer magazines in the early '90s? They're all gone now. I remember a magazine called PC Sources that had more than 500 ad pages in its first issue, and it's gone.

IWM: New teen magazines are flooding the newsstands -- Teen People, Teen Vogue, CosmoGIRL!, and Elle Girl is due in August. Are teen titles in danger of becoming an over-crowded field?

Husni: For years there were only three teen magazines: Teen, Seventeen, and YM. And now the teen marketplace is exploding. I don't think we've reached the overcrowded stage yet. Look at how many women's magazines we have. There is still a lot of room to grow in the teen titles.

IWM: What other trends are you seeing in magazines?

Husni: Men's magazines are booming, like Maxim and FHM. We're also seeing more magazines serving the unique individual needs of specific audience segments, like African-American women. Magazines in that way are becoming more and more specialized.

IWM: You must have a great love of magazines, since you've made them your life's work. What is it about magazines that you find so appealing?

Husni: Magazines are like my Prozac. Even if I'm depressed I'll grab a magazine and starting looking through the pages, and it's refreshing. If I don't go to the newsstand at least once a day I feel there's something missing. I love their portability. I've always enjoyed the fact that no matter where I go I can take a magazine with me. They're the greatest invention.



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