Billion-Dollar Year?

MAGAZINES

Despite some troubled spots here and there, U.S. magazines have never enjoyed better collective health. All signs, reported the Magazine Publishers Association, point to the first billion-dollar advertising year in magazine history. Ad revenue for the first nine months of 1964, said the M.P.A., which represents some 300 magazines (combined circ. 160 million), set a new high at $698 million--up 7.2% over the same period in 1963.

Time Inc. magazines alone produced 26% of the nine-month ad-revenue figure: $181 million, an increase of 11.8% over last year. Both LIFE and TIME logged sizable gains. LIFE'S three-quarter advertising income was $110 million. With record ad revenues of $47 million, TIME is in third place; ahead of Reader's Digest and Saturday Evening Post, behind LIFE and Look ($52 million).

Advertising gains have been matched by a steady increase in magazine circulation, much of it attributable, says M.P.A. Executive Vice President Robert E. Kenyon Jr., to an impressive increase in the number of high school and college graduates--whose ranks supply most magazine readers. "Our surveys, using 1940 as a base year," said Kenyon, "project a 174% increase in high school graduates by 1970--and a 163% increase in magazine circulation."

U.S. magazines have also weathered the period of adjustment after television became a new competitive communications medium. Today, said Kenyon, TV time comes so high that one-sponsor shows are rare; some programs bristle with such a host of sponsors--and sponsor commercials--that Advertising Age magazine recently took note of a growing consumer hostility toward the products. "The nation," said Kenyon, "is discovering that, by and large, TV is an entertainment medium. There's a definite trend back to print."

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