It was only a matter of time before major American magazines, flagships of the national media business, began to close or be put on the auction block. BusinessWeek is for sale according to several industry sources. It has been the flagship of McGraw-Hill (MHP) for decades and is the only major weekly business magazine in the country.

BusinessWeek’s woes are not unusual and are similar to those of other weeklies and bi-weeklies including Forbes, Newsweek, and Time.

Advertising pages in large magazines are nosediving. Some of the largest publications have lost more than 50% of their advertising pages in three years. Some of the properties are cutting their paid circulations to save money.

As their print operations falter, magazines have tried to move their products online in the hope that readers would go there as well. But, most magazine websites offer their content for free on the internet, which means that advertising has to support these properties online. The internet audiences of large weeklies and biweeklies are not big enough to support revenue that can offset what the companies are losing in print sales.

Magazines have become newspapers, at least in terms of their P&L dynamics.

Many magazines, especially large business publications, are losing money now. While they still have strong brands, they may have value to buyers who want the prestige of owning them. If that is not the case, magazines like BusinessWeek may simply be gone within a year or two.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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