BoSacks Speaks Out: MRI Audience Numbers

BoSacks Speaks Out: OK, Call me a skeptic, call me a curmudgeon, you can even call me a dinosaur, but don't call me a believer in the lost city of Atlantis or absurdly grotesque phantom circulation figures. Even if it's true that that the statistics say that Handgun Magazine gets 47.1 readers per copy, it ain't so. That is more than one new person reading each printed copy every day of the month. Are these office copies left in some doctor's office? Perhaps they are from the firing range. I get it, it's the guys sitting around the 'ol cracker barrel sharing their single copy of the magazine. Sorry, I just don't buy the premise.


"I'm not going to lie. . . The only stat that counts is if you win games. I understand that, but still, I don't want my stats to look bad or not be up to par."
Michael Vick




First Half 2007 MRI Audience Numbers Released

By Bill Mickey

http://foliomag.com/viewmedia.asp?prmMID=7732




Small-circ enthusiast magazines have astonishing reader-per-copy rates.



Top-line spring readership data detailing circulation, audience and readers per copy for 254 titles for the first half of 2007 were released yesterday by media and consumer research firm Mediamark Research Inc. (MRI). The data presents an interesting opportunity to examine the relationships of these numbers. For example, according to MRI's data, there is a huge disparity between readers per copy figures for small enthusiast magazines and large mass-market titles.

The widest stretch from circulation to readers per copy, according to MRI, belongs to Handguns, which has a circulation of 114,000 and an astonishing 47.15 readers per copy, bringing total audience to 5.4 million. And, in general, the smaller enthusiast publications dominate in readers per copy, with the top ten titles in this category below 300,000 circulation.

But MRI arrives at the reader per copy category by dividing audience figures, which MRI generates, into circulation figures, which ABC or BPA provide. "We're pulling the audience [data] from our own study. We're pulling the circulation from either ABC or BPA, and we're dividing the readers that we obtain from our survey by the claimed circulation," says Julian Baim, chief research officer at MRI. "Handguns, for whatever reason, that number is on the exceptionally high side. We measure audience and then we take the circulation statement from either ABC or BPA and we take one and divide by the other."

Baim says that MRI measures audience by surveying consumers across a number of factors, including subscribers, single-copy purchasers, pass-along readers and public-place readers.

The figures in the report do not include electronic or digital copies of the magazines as reported on ABC statements. And Circulation figures are based on ABC and BPA publishers' statements.

Also interesting to note: AARP The Magazine, the largest circulation magazine in the U.S. at 23,171,000, has an audience of 31.5 million. Yet Meredith's Better Homes and Gardens, at a 7.7 million circulation, has an audience of 38 million. This is because AARP is almost flat in their readers per copy category at 1.36, according to MRI figures, while Better Homes and Gardens has almost 5 readers per copy.

In a separate release, AARP The Magazine compared its 31.5 million audience reach to YouTube (30 million U.S. audience), iPods (30 million units sold) and The Oprah Winfrey Show (30 million viewers).



Top Five Circulation

Magazine
Circulation
Audience
Readers Per Copy

AARP The Magazine
23,171,000
31,492,000
1.36

Reader's Digest
10,178,000
36,880,000
3.62

Better Homes and Gardens
7,698,000
38,037,000
4.94

Consumer Reports
5,000,000
18,131,000
3.63

National Geographic
4,732,000
31,284,000
6.61






Top Five Audience

Magazine
Audience
Circulation
Readers Per Copy

People
42,375,000
3,793,000
11.17

Better Homes and Gardens
38,037,000
7,698,000
4.94

Reader's Digest
36,880,000
10,178,000
3.62

AARP The Magazine
31,492,000
23,171,000
1.36

National Geographic
31,284,000
4,732,000
6.61




Top Five Readers Per Copy

Magazine
Readers Per Copy
Circulation
Audience

Handguns
47.15
114,000
5,375,000

Sport Truck
35.26
71,000
2,503,000

Popular Hot Rodding
29.92
117,000
3,501,000

Stock Car Racing
29.76
91,000
2,708,000

Bridal Guide
24.56
178,000
4,372,000



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