In an unusual step for Time, the newsweekly is publishing three fewer issues this year, for a total of 48. Time usually only had one double issue, its year-end Person of the Year issue. This year there will be three, POY including the Time 100 and Making of America.
Cutting issues is one sure way to improve a magazine’s financial picture (and ultimately, the parent company's). Time is said to be profitable, but much less so than it used to. Its ad page count has fallen by almost 50 percent over the past five years. Last year through Nov. 19, ad pages fell 15 percent to 1,004, per MIN.
Time actually went dark one week in 2011, but it published an extra issue for the Royal Wedding, resulting in the same number of total issues.
The frequency cut makes Time like most other weekly magazines that aren’t really “weekly” as news-reading has shifted online. Bloomberg Businessweek has 50 issues on the calendar this year. Before going digital-only, Newsweek published 44 issues last year. The New Yorker has 47 issues scheduled this year, and New York, 42.
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