I really appreciate your feedback.
You bring up interesting points that have not escaped me personally. Being a subscriber to both Time and People I’ve noticed the media evolution and the economy have had a more significant “slimming effect” on Time compared to People. The “Time vs. People” paradigm effect is only in its infancy and I’m concerned about the maturation of such a trend.

The 24 hour news cycle is really a bit of a myth since if you look at either news or entertainment 24-hour channels you will see a lot of redundancy in programming and only about 30% per day is original. The biggest frustration I see is that news stations which have “24 hours” to fill continue to cover news in the traditional 2 minutes of surface for the majority of topics. Where’s the investigative journalism?!

The perfect world would have a “fair and balanced” view of “Brangelina” AND Fixing our economy. Until that happens, please don’t hold your breathe, I always suggest properly targeting your audience. Go where your constituents are to maximize your effort. If you are advertising for a $50.00 tube of lipstick People is the route for you vs. advertising for Microsoft Office products you should target Time.

Thank you for the feedback. I both believe and hope magazines will not meet the same fate as many daily newspapers. The damage to the free press could already be irreparable and magazines are the light at the end of the tunnel.

I enjoyed your post, you made several excellent points.

My specific question is:

Why did the audience for classic American “news” magazines seem to die? I can remember when Time, Newsweek, and the US News Report were all vibrant, successful publications.
But if you pick up any one of them today they all seem to be thin, lifeless publications. (shadows of their former self’s)

BUT if you pick up a People, or an US magazine you can tell just tell “just by their heft” that they still are vital, well read publications.

Someone from the “hard news” industry might say, “Well the public has had their interest for hard news satiated by the 24 hours news channels. .

But doesn’t the entertainment news industry have the equivalent of a half dozen 24 hour channels dedicated to celebrity news. And aren’t their literally tens of thousands of gossip, entertainment and celebrity web sites. As well as tens of thousands of celebrity oriented blogs, and “U-all” tubers? Hasn’t cyber space literally become a “twitter” with all the celebrity gossip?

So (all things being equal) should I invest my money in a full page add in People, or Time magazine? And has there been a qualitative as well as quantitative shift in Time’s metrics?

And finaly, how do I reach the target audience that I use to reach by advertising in Time or News Week?

Sincerely,

Jackson Drake