A quiet December in the UK magazine industry saw the annual number of new launches fall slightly year on year in 2001. According to the February release of data from Seymour, total launches fell by 8.0% from 427.
The quiet December, with only 28 regular frequency launches, dragged the overall growth for 2001 into the negative. In the twelve months to November, however, the number of launches rose from 421 to 440 – or 4.5% – year on year.
During the course of 2001 Comics & Teenage saw the most launches at 77, an increase on the 63 of the previous year. Computing, conversely, saw only 48 new titles last year, compared to 91 the year before.
In terms of retail sales value (RSV), only three sectors saw positive growth in the three months to October 2001. Motoring & Motorcycling is again the best performing sector (+8.5%); Foreign Titles is again up (+2.3%) and General Interest shows a 0.1% increase.
The whole market is seen to be 3.7% down but eight sectors have performed worse than this average. Computing (-23.4%); Men’s Fashion/Interest (-10.0%); Domestic Interest (-9.3%); Sport (-7.5%); News & Current Affairs (-6.2%); Countryside & County (-6.0%); Music (-5.4%) and Trade & Professional (-4.7%).
