A quickie history of the magazine industry

The Business of Magazine Publishing (CDJN112)

1873

Goldwin Smith used his Canadian Monthly to champion continentalism and free trade.

1869Canadian Illustrated News founded, and built a huge circulation by offering lurid and stirring images of the Northwest Rebellion.

1887

Toronto Saturday Night founded. (It dropped Toronto two years later.)

1893

Queen’s Quarterly founded.

1896The Busy Man’s Magazine founded, a digest of previously published pieces. In 1911, it was renamed Maclean’s and became well-known as Canada’s national voice – with a decidedly British and Imperial viewpoint.

Printers come to an agreement that four subtractive colours – CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) are to be the standard for four-colour lithographic process.

1900

1900

The government of Sr Wilfrid Laurier reduced 2nd class postage for publications by 75% “to foster national consciousness.

1903Ladies’ Home Journal, after 20 years in the business, is the first magazine to break 1 million in circulation.

1906

C. B. Cottrell & Sons invents the four-colour press.

1909

Condé Nast acquires a struggling society magazine called Vogue. He applied a principle new to publishing, targetting a specific audience.

2003 British Vogue

1912

Photocomposition is invented by William C. Huebner.

1914

National Geographic publishes the first colour picture – of a flower garden.

Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) is created, to guarantee the accuracy of magazine circulation claims.

1917McGraw-Hill formed, from the magazine and book interests of John A. Hill and James H. McGraw. They started out with railroad magazines and grew to become one of the largest information companies in the world. Publish among other things, Business Week.

The circulation of the top half dozen Canadian magazines during the Great War never amounted to more than 300,000 because of the flood of American magazines.

1920Canadian Forum founded by a group of faculty and undergraduates at the University of Toronto. The first editorial board was Barker Fairley as Literary Editor and C. B. Sissons as political editor.

1922DeWitt and his Canadian-born wife Lila Acheson Wallace found Reader’s Digest. Initial circulation was 1,500 (at 10 cents a copy) and grew to more than 100 million in dozens of languages and editions worldwide. It didn’t accept advertising until 1955, which forced them to pioneer the kind of databased marketing that is taken for granted now.

1923

Starch Research is the first market research firm; offers its services to the magazine industry.

Time magazine founded by Henry Luce

1928Chatelaine, modelled on American women’s magazines, was founded and gained almost 60,000 readers its first year.

1930

Henry Luce launches Fortune magazine. (It cost $1 when a daily newspaper typically cost 5 cents.)

1932

Family Circle receives in-store distribution with a complimentary offer to the customers of the Piggly-Wiggly supermarket chain; the first magazine to do so.

1933David and Alfred Smart (publishers) and Arnold Gingrich (editor) launch Esquire magazine, starting off distributing 100,000 copies free in clothing stores. It went on to become an elegant and innovative publication, carrying both non-fiction and fiction from such notables as Ernes Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

1942

During World War 2, two large American magazines – Time and Reader’s Digest – began Canadian editions, in partnership with Toronto entrepreneur (and publisher of Liberty) Jack Kent Cooke.

1946

John Johnson founds Ebony magazine, then Jet and Tan, becoming eventually one of the largest black-owned businesses in the United States.

1947Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s government banned the importation of U.S. pulp magazines and comic books, but exempted supplements with newspapers. The Toronto Star’s Star Weekly increased in size overnight because it became the exclusive carrier of the most popular U.S. comics like Terry and the Pirates and L’il Abner.

In retaliation, the Montreal Star began Weekend magazine.

By 1952, the combined circulation of the two supplements was almost 2 million, more than the total circulation of the four leading magazines of the time.

1951The Massey Commission reported on a bleak Canadian cultural landscape, with little theatre or professional music and an English Canadian book insutry that produced only 14 works of fiction a year. As for magazines, it noted the overwhelming dominance of U.S.-produced titles, saying “(gifted Canadians) must be content with a precarious and unrewarding life or go abroad where their talents are in demand.”

The Commission recommended that the government pool $50 million in death duties from the estates of two major industrialists and create the Canada Council. It began in 1957.

1952

Jack Kent Cooke purchased the weekly Saturday Night and converted it to a biweekly.

1953

Hugh Hefner founds Playboy magazine, taking the “skin magazine” formula to the mainstream.

1960A.C. Neilsen introduces the first syndicated market research study in the United States.

The O’Leary Commission found that 75% of general interest publications bought in Canada were American and that Time and Reader’s Digest took 40 cents out of every dollar of magazine advertising.

1961Toronto stock promoter Percy W. Bishop acquires Saturday Night, merges it with the Canadian and creates Canadian Saturday Night. (It collapsed in 1963 in a “shambles of debt”. Arnold Edinborough buys it for its debts.)

1970The Senate Committee on the Mass Media (the Davey Commission) recommended that the un-implemented O’Leary recommendations be carried out. It found that in the previous 10 years, Time’s Canadian edition had doubled in circulation and its advertising revenue had tripled.

1967

Jann Wenner founded Rolling Stone magazine, tapping into a booming youth culture and pop music scene.

1973

• The first national Print Measurement Bureau (PMB) study was conducted.

• has grown to an annual sample of 24,000 to measure the readership of over 115 publications and consumer usage of over 2,500 products and brands.

1973

• The Canadian Periodical Publishers Association (CPPA) founded; later changed its name to the CMPA (Canadian Association of Magazine Publishers)

1974

Saturday Night suspended publication when Maclean Hunter refused to print it because of its outstanding $350,000 printing debt.

The Canadian Periodical Publishers Association was founded to foster Canadian-owned and operated magazines. (Later became the Canadian Magazine Publishers Association and then Magazines Canada.)

1975

The Liberal government enacted Bill C-58, which elminated the tax concessions enjoyed by Canadian editions of foreign publications like Time and Reader’s Digest. Almost immediately, Saturday Night resumed publication under new ownership and with $100,000 in cash from Imperial Oil. After Bill C-58 was passed, Time ended its Canadian edition.

1977

The National Magazine Awards Foundation was founded and gave out it first awards in the spring of 1978.

1978

Maclean’s became a newsmagazine, as a direct result of the improved economic environment under Bill C-58. It became a fortnightly, then a weekly.

1979

Norman Webster, London correspondent and later Editor-in-Chief of the Globe and Mail, purchased the magazine through his family’s foundation.

1981IBM introduces the first personal computers. First step in widespread computerization of magazine publishing.

1983Apple introduces the Macintosh, ushering in the beginning of desktop publishing.

1995

Salon Magazine, the first professionally staffed, internet-based magazine, is launched in San Francisco, offering “continuous publishing”

1997Life magazine’s December issue runs a photo essay by Stephen Johnson, the first story in the first national magazine to use computer-to-plate technology.

2003

• CMPA merges with Magazines Canada to become…Magazines Canada, now the umbrella organization for most consumer and b2b publications in the country