The Booming Celebrity Industry

A few weeks ago, we mentioned that you shouldn't read tooo much into the fact that the September Vogue carries over 700 pages of ads.  This isn't some magazine revival, just a sign of the times in the booming business of selling celebrities and fashion.  Here's even more evidence of just that fact:

As newsstand sales of newsweeklies dropped in the first half of 2005, celebrity title newsstand sales have increased, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. People and Us Weekly, for example, gained in single-copy sales, while Time newsstand sales dropped 3.4 percent from last year and Newsweek's single-copy sales plummeted 14 percent from last year, writes Mediaweek. However, total circulation for Time and Newsweek rose slightly, and newsstand sales account for only a small percentage of overall sales for those titles, while celebrity mags depend greatly on those single-copy sales.

In the industry, from what I understand, newsstand sales are the strongest indicator of the publication's health because those sales represent conscious decisions to buy the magazine, unlike subscriptions which are more passive.

As for the celebrity industry, I'd liken it to a bubble wrapped in a ponzi scheme.  Not only do you have an incredible amount of redundancy (do we really need Nicole Richie and Lindsey Lohan {she's not even redheaded anymore}?), but there's also a lot of artificially created celebrity, just like fake ponzi gains.  I don't think this is sustainable either.

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