Did Podcasts Contribute To The Decline Of Magazines?
Plus...Surfing Corporate podcast Review & Crow's Feet podcast has special Mother's Day and Memorial Day episodes.
According to wordsrated.com, between 2019 and 2022, total audiences for magazine companies decreased by 38.56 percent. Print magazines have been losing readers for several decades. Legacy publications such as Entertainment Weekly, Health, National Geographic, and countless others have gone from cultural icons to neglected antiques to be admired from afar.
Consider how far magazines have declined from the top of the cultural zeitgeist.
By 1970, LIFE was “America's 'favorite magazine' with over eight million subscribers.” Furthering the data, LIFE had an estimated pass-along rate “of four to five people per copy; each issue reached as many as 40 million people.”
People Magazine once had a readership of 46.6 million adults in 2009, the largest audience of any American magazine. But by 2018, its readership significantly declined to 35.9 million. The shrinkage was happening, and there was no way to stop it.
The prevailing wisdom is the rise of the internet led to the downfall of print magazines. But is that conventional wisdom true? In the teenage years of the internet, we were all led to believe that information would be at our fingertips. Just a search box away?
What we collectively experienced, however, is that the internet is less than a superhighway and more information gridlock. Data, information, news, gossip, and disinformation were served up to users as haphazardly and randomly as possible.
Yet podcasting, for all its decentralized structure, still organized topics, genres, categories, passions, and hobbies in a manner that made access and visibility much easier than internet searches where success is based on your ability to craft a Boolean string or use advanced search functions (date, file type, location…“all of these words,” “exact phrase,” “none of these words,” “only results”) to generate a search result.
After all, when we were told to Ask Jeeves in the mid-90s, users discovered that the search engine had a concierge feel but was decidedly self-service with its answers.
Did podcasting, with its unique ability to narrowcast to incredibly fine-grained niche audiences, also contribute to the decline of print magazines?
Certainly, Apple with podcast ecosystem categorized by genre made discoverability relatively easy. Although general interest magazines made the biggest splash -- Time, Newsweek, Life, Look -- it was the niche subject magazines that acted as the heartbeat of print magazines. Periodicals like Vogue, Better Homes And Gardens, Entertainment Weekly, Popular Science, and many others drove a reliable and stable subscription base.
Let's consider how the niche aspect of podcasting rang the death knell for many magazines.
Are you a science geek? No need to read magazines such as Popular Science, Scientific American, or Discover. Instead, you can listen to a wide range of superb science podcasts such as Science Vs, Unexplainable, Taboo Science, Short Wave, and Great Mysteries of Physics.
How about music magazines? In the golden age of such periodicals in the 70s and 80s we enjoyed Rolling Stone, Vibe, Crawdaddy, Creem, NME, and Spin.
Without such music periodicals, audiophiles can listen to terrific music podcasts such as Switched On Pop, History Of Rock Music in 500 Songs, Slate's Hit Parade, and Song Exploder. If you enjoy music from cultures around the world, fans can listen to Spotify:Mic Check, which focuses on international musical artists.
Some magazine publishers have adopted an "if you can beat 'em, then join 'em" strategy.
People Magazine, for example, has a popular daily podcast called, oddly enough, People Every Day with the effervescent Janine Rubenstein. To its credit, People also broadcasts Radio Eye, which is a reading service for people who are blind or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material. People Magazine is an hour-long reading of the magazine, broadcast on Sunday.
National Geographic has been productive with its Overheard series, which began in 2019 and has tackled such diverse topics as uncovering Greek myths, telling tales of Amazons, fearsome women warriors, exploring how war can’t stop a scientist determined to uncover humans’ path out of Africa; and a deep dive on where musical genius comes from, and how do we know it when we hear it?
Further exacerbating this trend from print to audio is the recent addition of the video component to podcasting with YouTube. Now, podcast fans can see an African elephant, a new fashion trend, a new design trend, or even James Webb Telescope images deep into our universe.
Of course, any transition is not without its weaknesses, imperfections, and stumbling blocks. First, since magazine subscriptions are essentially a Gen X / Baby Boomer habit, transitioning to a podcast based on the same niche topic may be diminished since podcast fans reside mostly in the under-40 crowd.
Second, print magazines in their heyday were an established, financially thriving industry. For example, in 2006, People Magazine had a circulation of 3.75 million and revenue that topped $1.5 billion.
No podcast can touch that revenue stream.
In fact, still to this day, most podcasts that deal with niche topics at the granular level (podcasts about art historians, Bob Dylan cover songs, advertising campaigns, and narcissism) deliver high-quality content to their targeted audience yet must work extremely hard to monetize their skillful efforts.
Consider that the Serial podcast captured a few million listeners over the course of a multi-episode season. Compare that to the Sports Illustrated (SI) Swimsuit Edition when, in 2005, the swimsuit issue brought in an estimated $35 million in ad sales, which was seven percent of Sports Illustrated's annual revenue. The swimsuit issue traditionally sold more than one million copies on newsstands, which is about 10 to 15 times as much as regular SI.
Podcasts are ascendant, yet still have a long way to go to match the cultural touchstones of iconic magazines that captured the attention of a majority of the population.
It's evident that print magazines can still survive if their business owners can blend print with digital, audio, and video and develop a value-added subscription model.
Finally, it's interesting and ironic that a podcast would release an episode about the death of magazines and the birth of its heir apparent. Slate's Decoder Ring podcast recently released an episode about bookazines, where host Willa Paskin begins, "Magazines have fallen on hard times.
The revenue from magazine racks has plummeted in recent years, and many magazines have stopped appearing in print or shut down altogether. Yet, last year, over 1,200 different bookazines went on sale across the country. They cover topics ranging from Taylor Swift, Star Wars, the Kennedy assassination, K-pop, the British royal family, and the career of retired movie star Robert Redford."
To summarize, did podcasts precipitate the decline of print magazines? I think the answer is yes and no. No, in that print magazines would have been swept into the cultural slush pile even without the advent of podcasting. Yes, because one overriding strength of podcasting is its ability to identify and serve niche markets too narrow for most media companies. It was that niche focus that enabled podcasts to supplant print magazines in topics such as design, entertainment, gossip, history, health, politics, science, and technology.
Still, I miss those days when you'd head into a doctor's waiting room and have a wide choice of magazines to choose from tables positioned around the room.
Anybody remember reading Highlights magazine while waiting for the doctor to request that you "say ahh?"
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Surfing Corporate Podcast: An Inside Guide To Navigating The Corporate World
If you have ever worked in the corporate world for any amount of time, then you know that it has its own set of rules and regulations. It's like living in Tolkien's Middle Earth. Everything's radically different there.
In the corporate world, political infighting is bloodier than in the current U.S. Congress. Power, ego, and control are the holy trinity of the corporate chalice. Psychopaths, sociopaths, and people afflicted with borderline personality disorder often hold seats of power and prestige.
Worse, employers furiously deny that they care more about profits, the stock price, and EBITDA than their own employees. Corporations love the adage,"Employees are our greatest asset," which they announce even during massive layoffs to jumpstart the stock price.
Perhaps there is a code of silence because there is not the usual endless number of podcasts on this topic. I worked in Corporate for 37 years. Perhaps we were sworn to secrecy like the Freemasons.
Even if there is a code of silence, that doesn't seem to bother The Surfing Corporate Podcast. The show "tackles the themes and issues of corporate life with a humorous and relatable point of view."
The podcast's elevator pitch is: "Hosted by Aileen Merciel and Glenda Pacanins, former media executives who have experienced first-hand what really goes on behind fancy corporate doors (and have a slightly evil sense of humor), this podcast aims to entertain as well as provide practical advice to employees who are currently navigating turbulent corporate waters."
The show lives up to its promise. It's engaging, has a sense of humor, describes the incongruities of corporate life, and offers solutions.
The podcast shares true stories of bizarre and embarrassing experiences veteran corporate surfers have had and tells how they came back to the surface after those life-threatening wipeouts.
The podcast even defines its audience: "If you’re a corporate employee who gets stressed, anxious, burned out, depressed, and occasionally feels like you’re losing your mind, this is the place for you."
The podcast's self-described mission statement incorporates the ambience of the show: Serious with a chance of humor. "Our goal is to help you not only navigate the corporate waters, but to surf the hell out of them, and all without throwing fellow employees to the sharks or promising your firstborn to Satan. It CAN be done."
The co-hosts, Aileen A. Merciel and Glenda Pacanins, are ideal for podcast hosting with their prior media experience. They are good together, complement each other well, and are genuinely funny. I enjoyed their on-air chemistry, which sounds like it extends to their personal lives.
Aileen A. Merciel was a Senior Vice President, Marketing & Creative – NBC Universal, Telemundo Enterprise. Merciel is a Venezuelan-American media executive who started out in Sony Pictures Entertainment Networks Latin America Venezuela as an On-Air Promotions Producer. She held corporate positions in Venezuela, Mexico, and the U.S. On the podcast's website, it says: "Coming from a creative background, Aileen was not blessed with a nose for office politics."
On the website, her bio includes these interesting tidbits:
"She was bestowed with the invaluable gift of a slightly evil sense of humor that was critical to her survival. Her unique multicultural insights and her bullsh*t-free lens bring a fresh voice to discuss the challenges of the workplace.
Aileen believes that corporate could benefit tremendously from a rebranding that truly questions its values and goals. She also believes that people who don’t like chocolate shouldn’t be trusted."
Glenda Pacanins was a Senior Vice President, Programming and Content Strategy NBC Universal, Telemundo Enterprises.
After working in corporate for more than 20 years, Glenda Pacanins is a self-described “recovering suit,” although she still can’t stop wearing heels to podcast recordings and PTA meetings.
Unlike Merciel, Glenda somehow managed to surf corporate relatively well.
Again, the podcast's website says: "She is fluent in English, Spanish, and most importantly, corporate bullsh*t.
She has written enough corporate lingo emails, memos, and presentations to last her a few lifetimes, and she lets people think that she has her sh*t together no matter how dire the situation (clearly a by-product of working in corporate for so long)."
The first episode I listened to of the podcast was, ironically, the March 13, 2024 episode. It's ironic because it's their first show as a podcast part of the Airwave Podcast Network. The show began in September 2021, so for two and a half years, these women bootstrapped an indie podcast that was successful enough to attract the attention of a legitimate podcast network like Airwave.
In addition, the co-hosts announced that they were up for a 2024 Ambie Award as an independent podcast. The Ambies are a series of awards given in the podcast industry. The Podcast Academy awards them in two overall categories: Show Recognition and Talent Recognition.
The co-hosts know their stuff about corporate "clown car" behavior, corporate processes like recognition and employee reviews gone wildly astray, and how to deal with the politics in corporate, which, as I said, can make Congress look like rank amateurs.
My favorite episodes to date include Top 8 Toxic Bosses from October 2021; The Delicate Art Of Corporate Communications from September 2021; Why Humor At Work Should Be Taken Very Seriously from Jun3 2022; Why Work Recognition May Be Better For Employers Than Employees from March 2024, and HR That Says F*ck(And Other Things) February 2023.
Check out Surfing Corporate. It's an excellent podcast on the topic that is not covered enough in audio, and has two superb co-hosts who have been in the corporate foxhole, taking fire from friends and foes alike. What I like most about it is that these two former Senior Vice-Presidents have a robust sense of humor, an eye for the absurd, and the ability to poke fun at themselves
I worked for a lot of Senior Vice-Presidents in my time. I wish they were more like Aileen Merciel and Glenda Pacanins.
Let me paraphrase Dale Carnegie, who once said: "When dealing with corporate people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion."
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MAY “CROW’S FEET: LIFE AS WE AGE” Podcast To Feature Mother's Day & Memorial Day Salutes
The 2022 American Community Survey estimated there were 55,892,014 people aged 65 and over in the U.S. out of a total population of 331,893,745, or 16.9%. More of us are living longer, and that's a good thing. Getting older is not for the faint-hearted, but it is a process that is inevitable.
Aging, however, also brings wisdom and humor, a finely-tuned perspective on life. In the Crow's Feet podcast, you’ll hear the voices of writers who will inspire you and often make you laugh about this journey through life.
“Older workers can be part of addressing our nation’s current challenge of talent pipeline shortages,” says Janine Vanderburg, a leader in the fight against ageism and founder of the “Age-friendly, Workplace Initiative”, which won a Metro Vision Award from the Denver Regional Council of Governments.
“A tribute to mothers everywhere” is how George “Ace” Acevedo, Crow’s Feet writer and podcast host for this special Mother’s Day podcast that aired May 8, describes this special episode. Crow’s Feet writers from all walks of life share their poignant stories about the mothers they remember and how they feel about motherhood, and “grandmotherhood,” now.
On May 22, Lee Bentch will host several veteran guests, including Barbara Kautz, author of “When I Die I’m Going to Heaven ‘Cause I’ve Been to Hell: A Memoir of My Year as an Army Nurse in Vietnam,” who will share their experiences about serving our country and the true meaning of Memorial Day. This special podcast promises to touch your heart for weeks to come.
These podcasts are part of a series featuring Crow’s Feet writers and others who talk about their experiences with aging. The series premiered on June 15, 2022. Look for the “Crow’s Feet” podcast on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes are released on the second and fourth Wednesday of each month.
“Crow’s Feet” on the Medium platform (www.medium.com/crows-feet
) offers a lively and informative collection of written essays on aging, with new pieces added daily. Since its debut in June 2019, the publication has quickly grown in popularity with contributing writers and readers alike. Currently, “Crow’s Feet” features the work of more than 500 contributing writers, 9,000 followers, and more than 5,500 visitors a day. Crow’s Feet: Life As We Age now includes podcasts, classes, and information to help change the perception of aging. Visit www.crowsfeetlifeasweage.com.