The data for 2022, released yesterday (21 February), showed an increase in UK/ROI sales of 22% for Build It incorporating Self Build & Design, while other titles recording double digit year-on-year improvements included English Heritage Members Magazine (up 17%), Pokemon (up 16%), Sight and Sound (up 13%), and Royal Horticultural Society title The Garden (up 10%).
Bauer Media, which published almost a third of the audited magazines sold in the UK during 2022, hailed titles including TV Choice, Take A Break, Empire, Mojo, and Country Walking which it said “retained their market-leading positions”, although circulation for each was down year-on-year.
Chris Duncan, Bauer Media’s CEO of UK Publishing, said: “These set of results demonstrate the robust performance of our portfolio of brands despite the challenging market conditions that our industry faced in 2022. We’ve seen newsstand sales perform solidly in most areas and this has given us a foundation to strengthen our digital and international offerings.
“We will continue to invest in our content as well as our editorial and membership platforms in 2023 and allow the brilliant talent across our business to shine.
“We also look forward to working collaboratively with our partners and advertisers to deliver consistent results for their businesses through these challenging times. Finally, thanks as ever to the millions of readers who made these results possible.”
For years, the women’s weeklies market has struggled, and this continued again in 2022, with every title seeing its UK/ROI sales fall. The biggest circulation drops in the sector were seen by Best (down 27%), New! (down 22%), and Closer (down 18%). That’s Life held up the best in this market, down by only 3% year-on-year.
Hello! had a good year as the star performer of the women's lifestyle/fashion sector in terms of its performance versus last year; its UK/ROI sales were up by 1% year-on-year. Tatler and Vanity Fair both slipped by only 1%.
The title with the biggest print circulation in the six-month period was The National Trust Magazine, which posted a figure of 2,679,226, up 5% year-on-year.
Tesco Magazine was second, although down 23% to 1,496,567, while the UK’s biggest paid-for print title, TV Choice, saw its circulation drop by 4% year-on-year to 972,869. Waitrose & Partners Food (down 1% to 684,083) and The RSPB Magazine (up 1% to 586,774) completed the top five, with What's on TV falling to sixth on circulation of 586,130 (down 7% year-on-year).
Separately, media group Future has announced that Jon Steinberg will succeed Zillah Byng-Thorne as CEO on 3 April. Byng-Thorne steps down on 31 March but will be available to support Steinberg over a two-month transition period.
Steinberg is a former president and chief operating officer of BuzzFeed and was also CEO of DailyMail.com in North America. Most recently he was the President of Altice USA's News & Advertising division.
