Advertising Age, an online resource of the news on media and marketing, has concluded that "Print is not aging well. Or, rather, its readers are aging rapidly." The statement is based on the latest research on the newspaper and magazine industries, conducted by Mediamark Research for Spring 2009.

The research focused on ascertaining the average age of the readership of papers and magazines. The findings, given the large amount of attention paid to the inexorable rise of digital sources of information- generally thought of as catering to a younger user base, are hardly surprising: readers of the print are getting older.
What is of note for the industry, on the other hand, is the speed at which readerships of individual publications are ageing, and how this process has particularly accelerated over the past five years. By correlating statistics for the average age of American residents and that of the readership of nearly 200 publications and publishing groups, it was found that the latter was ageing at almost the same pace as the overall population. The data also indicates that:

"Some magazines and newspapers are even seeing their audiences age in real time -- or faster. Readers' median age has increased 6.6 years since spring 2004 at Motorcyclist magazine, 6.8 years at Street Rodder and 6.8 years at Motor Boating."

The implications of the ageing demographics are not going unnoticed in the publishing world. A rise in the age base could cast doubt over the publication's own life expectancy, for example. There is also the question of advertising; it is no news that firms are increasingly targeting a younger market,

"There are many product categories that are particularly interested in younger consumers," said Brad Adgate, senior VP-director of research at Horizon Media. "And they generally will pay a premium for that, because they're so hard to reach and there's that notion of them having a 60-year lifetime value."

Does this latest research suggest therefore, that publications will have to either embrace their senior friends or seek out younger ones through innovation? Star magazine has chosen the latter option. Advertising Age reports how the average age of this publication has in fact decreased by 4.5 years since 2004, thanks to its transformation from a newsprint into a celebrity focused glossy. It has also changed its sales methods by reducing the focus on subscription based sales, which commits a predominately older reader, in favour of newsstand distribution, which attracts purchases by younger consumers.

Conversely, some publishers are keen to work with the ageing process. Older readers are seen as showing more loyalty to their favourite publications, which encourages longevity. Moreover, the fact that this demographic tends to harbour greatest amounts of expendable income should not go undervalued in a time of economic recession.

Statistics such as these produced by Mediamark, however, should be read in conjunction with other sources in market research, as conclusions about demographics risk being one-dimensional. Older consumers are not necessarily averse to buying into new media: a recent survey into the ages of users of the e-reader, the Kindle, revealed that more than half of its reporting owners were over fifty.

Source: Advertising Age