Role/contribution of advertising

[Peggy Wilkins]

I have been thinking recently about the cost of producing a major
general circulation magazine like PLAYBOY, and how that expense is
paid for.

It must be very expensive to print and distribute a magazine like
PLAYBOY since they print so many copies.  I would guess they are
printing some 3.5 million copies each month to cover paid and unpaid
circulation plus additional copies that end up in their catalog
warehouses.  This probably means that for every added page in the
magazine, multiply the cost of that single page times 3.5 million.
This probably means that as content is added, the cost can increase
tremendously.  Is there a great cost of adding pages to a magazine?
How is that cost offset?

How much of the cost of producing an issue of PLAYBOY is shouldered by
the ads, vs. other income sources?

Is there an explicit relationship between incoming ad revenue and the
number of pages?  Say that PLAYBOY ends up with fewer ad pages than
expected for a given month.  Does this mean they have to reduce the
number of planned pages, maybe by cutting a feature?

What if advertisers refused to buy pages in PLAYBOY?  Would this cause
the magazine to be unable to go to production?  I remember hearing
that LIFE magazine originally ceased publication due to advertising
difficulties.  That is just amazing, given the iconic status of that
particular magazine.

I am thinking of these questions for a couple of reasons:

- Recent suggestions that the magazine photography become more or less
explicit (which will certainly affect ad revenue).

- Personally I would like to see the magazine expanded, offering more
content.  Recent issues seem very short, and I was wondering how much
of this is an issue of needing sufficient backing funds for producing
the magazine.  Would increased content require increased ad support,
or could the cost be offset in other ways?

Knowing about these issues would help me get a better feel for what is
feasible and what is not.

Peggy Wilkins
mozart@lib.uchicago.edu