The Man Catchers

While British newspapers pull in their belts, women's magazines are popping out of their girdles. On Fleet Street last week the national dailies smarted under circulation losses totaling more than 1,000,000 a day since they boosted prices to tuppence ha'penny (3-c-) last October. Sunday papers and general-circulation magazines dropped 4,000,000 weekly in the same period. By contrast. Britain's women's magazines are faring better than ever.

Britain's proliferating women's weeklies, twelve in all (total circ. about 10.4 million), are the Cinderellas of postwar publishing. The bestsellers charge some of the highest space rates in Britain (up to $10,500 for a four-color page) and have to turn away business to keep the magazines down to manageable size (limit: 80 pages). The top rivals. Woman (circ. 3.462,488) and Woman's Own (circ. 2.556,130), alone have quadrupled circulation, last year boosted their prices to fivepence (6-c-) without flinching.

Though dull and dowdy by U.S. slick-paper standards, the prospering weeklies reflect Britain's war-born hunger for higher living standards. For the middle-and working-class women who form the bulk of their readership, the magazines are handbag-crammed with counsel on beauty care, clothes, cooking, etiquette, interior decoration and romance.

From their sirupy fiction to their slinky fashion ads, the weeklies are put together with but a single thought in mind: the care and catching of men. Thus, unlike such U.S. monthlies as Good Housekeeping and McCall's, most British women's magazines seldom brood over weighty social problems. Explains one of their top executives: "All other magazines turn people outward and away from themselves. Women's magazines deliberately invite the woman to think about herself."

Last week distaff-conscious Odhams Press Ltd., which publishes Woman and Everywoman. added a new magazine called Woman's Realm to its harem. The first issue sold out its press run of more than 1,000,000 copies within a few hours.

Odhams' top competitor, George Newnes Ltd. (Woman's Own. Modern Woman), was shrilly trumpeting Woman's Day, due out this month, as its own new entry in the man-catcher sweepstakes. Both will compete directly with their own stablemates. But by offering lower ad rates ($2,800 a color page), based on a guaranteed circulation of 1,000,000 each, the two new magazines expect to attract a flock of would-be advertisers who are being priced out of the women's market.

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