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    Will Esquire DropDead?

    By encinoman

    So 24/7 Wall Street is claiming. The collapse in print advertising has pushed revenue at most of Hearst’s large magazines down by double digits after a bad year in 2008. &;Hearst is going to have to cut some of its anemic magazine titles. Esquire is among the weakest of the major men’s magazines on the basis of advertising page performance. Through April, ad pages at the magazine dropped 27% to 206. Men’s magazines are one of the most crowded categories in the industry. Esquire is up against GQ, Details, Men’s Journal, Maxim, and a number of men’s fitness and health publications. The men’s magazines which are performing the most poorly will not last long. Understandably terrified of being teabagged by a tag-team Maxim/GQ combo, Esquire denies that they are an endangered species. To that list I would add Playboy.  The current issue, with Lisa Rinna (who?) on the cover and nekkid inside, is an anemic 118 pages. Combined with the size shrinkage of the magazine and thin cheap paper stock, it&;s an unprepossessing half the size of my Dad&;s Playboys from the early 1970&;s, when I developed an interest in the genre. While Playboy the magazine doesn&;t know who it is either,  at least their Bettie Page fixation is harmless, if gay.  But I have an active dislike of Esquire, partly based on their ever-snobby attitude.  (And just who are their real readers, anyway?) But I mostly dislike them because of the  &;investigative obituary&; (investigating her sex life, I recall) of Judith Resnik, the Challenger space shuttle astronaut, right after she was tragically killed.  Way to go, Esquire.  We won&;t miss you when you&;re gone.

    Tags: Bettie-Page, death-of-magazines, Esquire, Judith-Resnik, Lisa-Rinna, Playboy

    This entry was posted on April 23, 2009 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Men's Magazines, Playboy, Publishing.

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