What to do with Fortune and Money

Amy Chozick and Christine Haughney of The New York Times are reporting that Time Inc. and Meredith Publishing cannot decide on what to do with business magazines Fortune and Money as part of their proposed deal to merge magazine operations.

Chozick and Haughney write, “The Time Inc. domestic titles that are at issue in the negotiations have struggled in recent years because of a tough advertising market and declining newsstand sales. Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated all experienced declines in advertising pages in 2012 compared with 2011, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. Time’s advertising pages declined by 12.2 percent and Sports Illustrated’s by 5.5 percent. Money’s pages dropped by 5 percent and Fortune experienced a 4 percent decline.

“Time and Fortune have experienced overall declines in their circulation in the past five years of about two percent, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. But they have also suffered big declines in newsstand sales. Fortune’s and Time’s newsstand sales fell by 33 percent and 45 percent, respectively, from 2007 to 2012. Sports Illustrated suffered a 46 percent decline in newsstand sales. Money took the biggest hit with an overall circulation decline over the past five years of 7.6 percent and a 50 percent decline in newsstand sales.

“Meanwhile, InStyle, a property that is far more desirable to Meredith, has seen its advertising pages grow by 5.4 percent between 2011 and 2012. Its overall circulation rose over the past five years by 4 percent. Its newsstand sales dropped by 24 percent.”

Read more here.