Before I
respond to Samir
Husni's blog posting, I feel I have to preface this extremely
serious, on-going discussion and reiterate for the record my consistent
position on magazines.
I believe that print will survive and
be very profitable for many publishers for several generations. I believe that
there will literally be billions of dollars of print advertising revenue for
the print industry going out as far as 2020. In fact, I'll give you an exact
anticipated figure. I suggest there will be in the range of 10 to 12 billion dollars
of print revenue still remaining for the periodical business seven years from
now.
According to Samir's dialog
, I should be jumping for joy, based on the numbers released, but
actually I am not. Our industries revenue number has literally plunged
since 2007 when advertising print revenue was $47 Billion. Yes, we are alive,
but greatly diminished. Is there another interpretation that I am missing? The
joy as I see it, if there is any with statistics like those that continue to be
released, is the fact that in the same time period that publishers' print
revenue has decreased, their digital revenue has increased. The digital
revenue increases are not at all the same pace as the print declines yet, but they
are at least headed consistently north.
