Just How Much Did Conde Nast Lose? (09 Rev Minus $1 Billion - Dinosaur Media DeathWatch™)

Newsweek ^ | October 8, 2009 | Johnnie L. Roberts

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After months of speculation, the carnage came to Condé Nast earlier this week. The company, one of the nation's three biggest magazine publishers, announced it would close four magazines, including Gourmet, one of the industry's most iconic publications.

A NEWSWEEK analysis of industry data provides new evidence of the financial toll that drove that decision: based on estimates of publishing data, Condé Nast could see its ad revenue drop by $1 billion in 2009.

Through August, ad dollars already have plunged by about $600 million from the similar eight-month period in 2008 when revenues also were depressed. Of Condé Nast's two dozen magazines, among them some of publishing's glossiest titles, all suffered declines, most stretching into the double digits.

The grim analysis, based on data from the Publishers Information Bureau, provides the starkest rationale yet for Condé Nast's decision to shutter titles and lay off nearly 200 people this week. The closures are only part of the company's effort to trim perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars of expenses, likely to include more layoffs on top of those caused by the closures. Under corporate edict to slash budgets by 25 percent, each of the surviving 20 titles must comply by early November, according to a senior Condé Nast insider who wouldn't be identified discussing internal matters. Condé Nast's titles include Architectural Digest, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ, Vogue, and Wired.

The sharp cost-cutting comes at the urging of McKinsey & Co. whose consultants spent weeks prowling the company's glass-skinned office tower in midtown Manhattan, renowned for its Frank O. Gehry-designed 260-seat cafeteria. When the bloodletting is completed, it will have transformed a culture of lavish spending so ingrained that only now is Condé Nast seriously bowing to what for many in the industry is an existential reality.

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Thursday afternoon good news.

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ping

[Huskrrrr]

More trees saved (sarc).

[HiTech RedNeck]

A luxury publication based on luxury pursuits. Not particularly leftist (travel and resorts are pretty nonpolitical things), but definitely a casualty of the bummer economy.

[abb]

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[Cicero]

Hard to see why they should close Gourmet, unless their employees are unionized. My wife has subscribed forever. I just looked at the latest copy, and it’s absolutely crammed full of high-end ads.

Their budget must be totally out of control. But it’s hard to believe that they would close that and not some of their other junk instead.

[Cheerio]

Hussein bailout on the way for Jurassic print media.

[GadareneDemoniac]

I always get my kid a gift subscription to Architectural Digest for Christmas; in fact I have the order form here on my desk. I wonder what I should do — if they go out of business, I guess I won’t get a refund of the unearned subscription.

Anybody have any experience with this?

[GeronL]

They should borrow a billion dollars and go on a spending spree. It did work for Marvel, but that was definitely a special case.

[GeronL]

Did Modern Bride not have enough ads? Last time I saw one on the rack it looked like a phone book.

[BunnySlippers]

I called their offices in NYC to protest the closing of Gourmet. My family has been subscribing since the 60s.

The Wall Street Journal showed the declining ad revenues. All magazines, including food magazines where down sharply, with the exception of Saveur.

[Newtoidaho]

I got an offer in the mail last year, $10 for a year for Portfolio, a business magazine that Conde Nast used to publish. They sent me 1 issue, then decided to stop publishing, said they’d send Wired instead. Still haven’t seen a single issue of Wired.
Funny thing was, the one issue of Portfolio was pretty good, I probably would have renewed it.

[skipper18]

this is wonderful news

let all the libtard socialist mags like gourmet and bride magazine and architecture digest vanish forever

america is not about this garbage

soon there will no no more magazines or newspapers or stupid television shows, and those are the things that drive consumption, so we are forever free soon from all this affluence that destroyed america.

[angkor]

>>> Hard to see why they should close Gourmet ... it’s absolutely crammed full of high-end ads. <<<

I looked at the rate card yesterday, it was slightly over $1 million for a 4/Color 12x full-page ad.

That $1 million buys a lot of web site. So the advertising equation was a bit skewed for a potential Gourmet advertiser.

Also the Gourmet special Holiday issue (Christmas) closed for advertising on Sept. 30. They killed the magazine a few days later. It must not have been a pretty sales month, and for books like Gourmet, the Christmas issue is usually the annual blockbuster.

[Trillian]

When some magazines I was subscribing stopped being made they replaced the remainder of the subscription with another magazine that they put out. I’m sure every company does something different though. I’d call and ask.

[angkor]

>>> let all the libtard socialist mags like gourmet and bride magazine and architecture digest vanish forever <<<

Some of the bloggers who have been commenting on Gourmet’s closure have said it was going downhill and yes, did have some lefty political content.

[abb]

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[Buckeye McFrog]

the only place I’ve ever seen most of those magazines is in a Doctor’s waiting room...so Obamacare should do them in pretty quickly

[Uncledave]

IMO, over the past few years Gourmet turned away from being a totally food-centric publication into just another high-end lifestyle book hawking travel, luxury watches and cars. Yawn.

[Cicero]

To tell you the truth, I don’t read it myself. But I think the problem was that there was a window of time when Americans were ready to be exposed to all kinds of really new recipes, and that time has now passed.

When we got married, my wife didn’t know how to boil water. So she bought some cook books. First, the Joy of Cooking, which is a classic. How long to boil an egg, for instance.

But she also got Craig Claiborne, who was writing for the NY Times in those days, and Julia Child. The kind of recipes in their cookbooks were new to practically everbody in this country back then. You could go to France and get that stuff, or a few restaurants in the big cities, but no one cooked that kind of food at home.

But today, most of the good recipes have already been published. Not only French cooking, but Italian and Mexican and all the rest. There’s always room for a few new things, but it’s not as easy and interesting to write about as it was.

So, as you say, many of the writers have gotten pretty superficial. They are likely to be more impressed by expensive decor than good food.

So, maybe it’s time for Gourmet to die, although it’s a pity. It used to be very good. But I guess it’s pretty much done its job.