Can the Jesus tablet pull print back from the brink?
Then what? After two years of double-digit ad page declines and flat (at best) CAGRs as far into the future as the spreadsheet can see, the magazine industry could use a savior right about now. And that precisely is how some in the industry treated Steve Jobs’ gift from Mount Cupertino — a new tablet format that sold over 3 million units in the spring alone. “I think in five years this will be the major way in which magazines will be consumed,” says Rebecca McPheters, president of McPheters & Company, whose iMonitor research of the industry’s quick embrace of the platform showed 192 print-magazine apps in market by mid-July. Why such a rush to a digital app format? Magazines are hopeful that mobile devices will help reset a relationship with paying consumers and higher-paying advertisers that the Web seemed to break. “We were so riled up about it we made a video before we even had an iPad in hand,” says Terry McDonell, editor, Sports Illustrated Group. “They are so damn cool.” And the
