New York magazine, launched as a weekly 45 years ago by Clay Felker, is mulling a move to a biweekly as rumors swirl that it will post a 2013 loss of several million dollars.
Anup Bagaria, CEO of parent New York Media, confirmed that cutting the frequency of the magazine in 2014 is being considered at the highest level.
“There is nothing definitive yet,” he said.
The company is in the midst of its budget planning for next year in an increasingly tough environment for print.
Bagaria declined to comment on profitability but said it’s not the first time the company has mulled the move.
“Over the past five years we’ve considered various options,” he said.
While digital ad sales are growing, it has not been enough to stem the shrinking dollars coming from the weekly print edition, increasing pressure on Editor-in-Chief Adam Moss.
“It would be sad if it happened, but it would not surprise me,” said Steve Cohn, editor of Media Industry Newsletter, which showed that New York’s ad pages were down 9.2 percent year-over-year through Oct. 14.
Digital now accounts for about half the company’s ad revenue, but that is attributable as much to print’s steady erosion as it is to digital’s gains in recent years.
Before the recession, New York racked up 3,343 ad pages in 2007, according to MIN — 1,500 pages more than it is expected to tally this year.
Ad pages fell 12 percent in 2008, followed by a staggering 27 percent drop in 2009.
And in a move that is sure to be worrisome as it pushes for digital dollars, Web traffic in September dropped to 3.6 million unique monthly visitors, according to comScore, a 16 percent drop from last year.
A Wasserstein family trust inherited the magazine after the death of Bruce Wasserstein in 2009. The financier brought it for $55 million back in 2003.
So far, the Wasserstein family has kept the magazine and websites rolling, but it is not clear what the trust’s capacity is to absorb losses over a prolonged period.
The most recent example in the weekly media world holds little promise. When stereo equipment magnate Sidney Harman died in April 2011, only months after rescuing Newsweek, his family trust soon bailed on the money-losing magazine.
Like other “weekly” publications, New York has resorted to more double issues in slow periods and a gradual cutback in frequency. In the first half of the year, it published 20 issues, not 26.
For the full year, the magazine plans to publish 42 issues and is increasingly relying on one- or two-shot specials — such as New York Weddings and New York Design Hunting — to pad its ad- page tally.
On the print side, circulation has stagnated around the 400,000 level.
In the six-months ended June 30, total circulation was 408,822, a rise of less than 1 percent, according to the Alliance for Audited Media.
But a careful look shows that to reach its rate base — the circulation it promises advertisers it will deliver each issue — the magazine was forced to give away about 64,564 free issues each week, known as “verified” circulation.