1930-1990 Advertising consolidates its hold on magazines
 |
Cover of Mother Jones Magazine.
|
While few magazines changed their editorial viewpoint directly because of advertising pressure, there were subtle changes in content from the beginning. Mostly, these changes took the form of pressure away from potentially "offensive" material -- whether political or sexual. In the late forties, the leftist magazine Ken lost momentum when advertisers threatened to withdraw not only from Ken but also from its parent magazine Esquire. Other celebrated magazines, including PM, the New Yorker, and even the early Time, either bucked or gave in to similar pressures.
The content of the pressure changed; for instance, advertisers who had once pressured magazines away from sexual suggestion began to champion it after about 1975. But the pressure itself remained. I still remember the courageousness that seemed to accompany this issue (right) of Mother Jones in 1979:
An editorial inside the issue backed up their cover claim by citing a Columbia Journalism Review survey of magazines that carry cigarette ads. None had run a comprehensive anti-smoking article in the previous seven years. At the time, I called their advertising director, who told me that Mother Jones has very few nationally-placed consumer ads because major advertisers were sticking (at that time) to magazines over 500,000 circulation. They had run a major article on the gas-tank explosion crisis of the Ford Pinto (a precursor to Ford's current troubles with its Explorer tires) and the ad director said they hadn't received any automobile ads since.
I don't mean to blame the advertisers; they can (and should) choose where to place their money. But the dominance of advertising was a critical, often unregarded influence on the magazine format, in ways that rippled out through the culture.
This is what made a magazine good for advertising in 1980:
A clearly defined, guaranteed readership of 500,000 or more, hooked by a stable editorial stance.
The right balance between amount of text and picture. Too much text is boring, but readers flip through a toss aside pictures-only too quickly. (Advertisers had pressured Henry Luce to add articles and essays to Life for this reason.)
Lots of 'grey matter': plain columns of type with no pictures or headline, run next to ads to make them stand out. Some magazine historians credited part of the New Yorker's success to this format.
back