Magazines: Gains & Losses

Many factors were involved — doubts about the economy, automotive strikes and the continuing inroads made by television — but their cumulative effect was to shrink magazine advertising rev enue somewhat last year. General magazines showed the sharpest decline.

Though still carrying far more advertis ing than any other publication, LIFE was down almost $14 million, to $155,700,000. Look was down more than $3,000,000, to $77,000,000; the Reader's Digest had a drop of $12 million, to $48,600,000. Of the Curtis publica tions, the already shaky Saturday Evening Post showed a drop of more than $2,600,000 and Holiday was off half a million, but the Ladies' Home Journal registered a gain of almost $2,000,000.

Two newsweeklies showed a substantial gain. TIME was up more than $3,000,000, to $89,500,000; Newsweek also increased some $3,000,000, to $46,600,000. U.S. News & World Report, on the other hand, was down $200,000, to $25,800,000. Most specialty magazines showed impressive gains. TV Guide was up more than 8%, to $45,800,000. Forbes rose 28%, to $6,600,000. The fashion magazines were equally buoyant. So were Saturday Review, Scientific American, Popular Mechanics, 'Teen, Skiing, Flying, and the automotive magazines.

If further proof was needed that smartly packaged sex sells, 1967 furnished it. By linking sex with the swinging life, Playboy, whose circulation spurted 28% to 5,000,000, saw its ad revenue rise 19% to $20,500,000. By making sex seem as routine and casual as teeth-brushing or hair-setting, Helen Gurley Brown's Cosmopolitan slipped into something comfortable — an ad revenue increase to $3,600,000, which isn't a very high figure, but for Cosmopolitan it was a 50% gain.