PC Magazine Wins the Ad Page Race Again

The number of ad pages that a magazine sells each year matters less than the total revenue brought in by those pages. Still, to sell more ad pages than the other guy is usually the basis for bragging rights.

According to Advertising Age, year-end figures to be released later this month by the Publishers Information Bureau are expected to show that PC Magazine led the field for the second straight year (despite a 9.4% decline from 1995, to 6,004 pages), followed by Forbes.

Forbes, which will mark its 80th anniversary this year, squeaked past its 1995 ad-page total to finish 1996 with nearly 4,545 pages.

Rounding out the top five in 1996 were Business Week with 3,883 pages; People, which had a strong gain of 11.4% to end with 3,707; and Fortune in fifth place with 3,328. The estimated ad revenues of magazines will be released later this month.

The End of Civilization: The pre-Christmas announcement from Times Mirror Co. that Stephen G. Smith will become editor of National Journal eclipsed the news from another company that the classy magazine he leaves behind will cease publication.

The December / January issue of Civilization apparently is the last. The demise comes two years after a group of investors launched the magazine under an agreement with the Library of Congress, whose vast collection helped generate a number of feature stories.

Last spring, Civilization won one of the biggest awards of the business, a National Magazine Award for general excellence, for its “fine writing” and “graceful ability to connect the present and the past.”

Circulation was about 230,000, but had been slow to rise toward a stated goal of 500,000 as direct-mail solicitations failed to keep pace with the response rate among initial subscribers.

Smith, 47, a former executive editor of Newsweek, succeeds Richard S. Frank, who is retiring after 20 years as editor of National Journal, a weekly publication that specializes in political reporting.

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Sports Extra: There were eight issues of ESPN Total Sports magazine in 1996, including a pro football preview and a “who to watch” roundup of athletes. Now . . . what?

Hearst Magazines, whose parent corporation holds a 20% interest in ESPN (best known as a sports network on cable TV), acknowledged this week that the Total Sports salespeople have been reassigned and editorial staffers are working on a prototype for a weekly.

These moves come as talk persists that Total Sports may be folded into Sport, owned by Petersen Publishing Co., in a bid to challenge Sports Illustrated.

“We’re continuing to evaluate the project,” Hearst spokeswoman Jill Davison said. “There’s no announcement just yet.”

Afterwords: Elle gets a leg up on Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue (out next month) by featuring January cover girl Cindy Crawford in six sultry pages of beachwear for ’97. . . .

The February issue of the popular YM (Young & Modern) contains a format twist new to us--a special sealed section opened only by ripping along a perforated line. The eight-page section offers “sex secrets” to its post-pubescent readers, such as “25 major makeout mistakes” and “how to not get pregnant,” which consists of an illustrated chart assessing the pros and cons of condoms, the pill and so on. . . .

The new editor in chief of Seventeen magazine is Meredith Berlin, who has been long associated with Soap Opera Digest, most recently as editor at large. Berlin succeeds Caroline Miller, the new editor in chief of New York, also owned by K-III Magazines. . . .

The Henry Johnson Fisher Award is one of the more prestigious, black-tie honors in the magazine industry, bestowed annually by the Magazine Publishers of America in memory of the former chairman of Popular Science Publishing Co.

One recipient on Jan. 29 will be Robert E. Petersen, who founded Petersen Publishing Co. in Los Angeles nearly 50 years ago and recently sold the publisher of Motor Trend and other special-interest magazines to a group of investors led by former Hearst Magazines executive D. Claeys Bahrenburg. The other honoree will be Richard B. Stolley, one of the industry’s groundbreaking editors, who worked at Life for 19 years before starting up People in 1974 (despite snickers from many of his colleagues at the time). . . .

In Yankee magazine, the chronicle of New England, the classified ads are often as interesting as the feature stories. The “Swop [sic] of the Month” in the January issue leaves us wondering who: “New Yorker cartoonist will swop his original cartoons / cover drawings for American primitive, country or Shaker antiques.”

* Paul D. Colford is a columnist for Newsday. His e-mail address is [email protected]. His column is published Thursdays.