Opinion: Doctor Who Magazine Has Become an Irrelevance in 2013

Doctor Who Magazine has a long established history within fandom, from the iconic days of Doctor Who Weekly through the highs and lows of the 1980s, acting as one of the stalwarts of the 1990s, the magazine helped keep the show alive during the dark times alongside Virgin Publishing. Once were the days that DWM would break the news to legions of fans every month, where there was no other outlet for information from the show save for the fanzines. It still holds a special warm fuzzy place in the hearts of fans and many in fandom seem to just like to know it’s there, even if hardly anyone actually buys it anymore. 

Doctor Who Magazine is however as irrelevant as the Doctor Who Appreciation Society and just as much a relic of the past by 2013.

Sales figures for 2013 indicate that between January and June DWM reached a grand total of 31,692 individuals, admittedly an increase on the same period the previous year when the magazine sold a shocking average of 27,089 copies. The rise is against market trends for which all credit must be given, yet the magazine is outsold by a host of other BBC properties (mostly published by Immediate Media) such as: Goodfood (252,085), Gardener’s World (237,650), Top Gear (137,406), BBC History (75,193), BBC Focus (66,862), Top of the Pops (63,483), Countryfile (38,244), Horrible Histories (36,856) and a host of Cebeebies magazines. While DWM only joined the ABC circulation index in 2010, reports indicate that the 27,089 figure is not much more that the days of Editor John Freeman when the show was off the air.

DWM cannot legitimately continue to proclaim to be the UK’s biggest a Sci-Fi magazine either as while it’s closest rival SFX sold 27,743 copies at the last figures, below DWM’s figures, this number is as deceptive as merely looking at TV ratings to gain a measure of viewership, a fact that DWM frequently points out. The SFX website boasts over 200,000 unique users and the magazine boasts a digital edition, it’s combined reach far exceeds DWM. SFX’s free release of Comic Heroes on Apple’s Newsstand gained them over a million downloads.

Now let’s put that into perspective. Taking the closest series in question, series 7, as our focus we find that the average viewing figures spread across the series was 7.44m. When looking at 31,692 as a percentage of 7.44m we find that Doctor Who Magazine reaches 0.4% of it’s potential audience. Admittedly many of those watching may be casual fans who wouldn’t go out an buy a magazine dedicated to the show, but the figure speaks for itself.

Now let us compare that to the leading independent Doctor Who internet site for the same period

Doctor Who News posted an average of 135,000 unique visitors per month between January and June 2013, a catchment of 1.8%, figures for Doctor Who Online is in a similar area. The figures show conclusively that in terms of where fans are going for their Doctor Who news and updates is certainly not Doctor Who Magazine anymore.

Earlier this year one of America’s foremost newspapers The Boston Globe was sold to the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool FC owner John Henry for $70m, a lot of money you might think, but not considering just twenty years previously it was worth a staggering $1.1b, a depreciation of a billion dollars. It is no fault of the Globe, a publication with four Pulitzer Prize winners in the past four years, rather it is a signal of the depreciation in the stock that is placed upon traditional forms of media and another signal as to the decline of print as a valid delivery method for information in the internet age.

This is the age of rolling news coverage and instant news alerts to your phone, the age where Twitter breaks the passing of Lou Reed nearly an hour before the BBC and where the blogosphere and forums are awash with news and opinion that will rarely get reported in official publications. With technology sitting alongside convenience and the the ability to tailor the news to the consumers own choices, you have to wonder if the battle between print and digital it was ever much of a competition to begin with. Digital media is not only far more convenient for the user it is faster than any monthly publication can ever be, more up-to-date and the potential for personalisation unmatched. It’s the next logical step forward. Just as handwritten documentation was replaced by the printing press, digital media is now also taking the course that history has paved for it.

Is it not telling that DWM has over 95,000 followers on Twitter, three times as many people as it actually sells the publication to.

DWM can’t even seek the consolation of these online digital downloads or an active website for the period in question like the aforementioned SFX, it is only now in the latter half of this year that the publication intends to go digital and has provided some semblance of an active web presence. A shocking state of affairs for any professional magazine and long after it’s rivals such as SFX from Future Publishing were making the transition from traditional print into digital. Indeed, Future has led the way in this area of marketing and places Panini firmly in the shade.

There were rumours earlier this year that the magazine was to change hands once again and debut with a new publisher, rumours that were denied by current Doctor Who Magazine Editor Tom Spilsbury, yet considering the decline and fall of the magazine under Panini you can’t help but feel that a reboot to this tired publication would be a good thing. Panini have completely failed to keep DWM at the forefront of technology and to market it to a key and changing consumer demographic, they have failed to keep the magazine relevant and have stagnated. You can’t help but fear however that it may be too little, too late, but hopefully not. Doctor Who Magazine has a long and proud history as a key part of fandom and with some major changes in place, not least at the marketing end of Panini’s business, it can be so again. Yet just like the show had to on its return to television, Doctor Who Magazine has to move with the times and drag itself firmly into the 21st century.

Note: This article caused a little stir on Twitter after it’s publication. It is not an attack upon DWM nor an attack upon its content. We are avid readers of the publication here at DWA. It is a piece that is critical of Panini’s handling of the magazine and it’s failure to adapt to the changing climate in media delivery compared to it’s publishing rivals. Panini’s failures have left DWM without a major presence on the internet until 2013 and lagging behind Future Publishing for example in terms of digital delivery. DWA believes that the official Doctor Who Magazine deserves the best and that Panini have failed in that task, through those failings such as a lack of web presence, application or digital download they have made the publication less relevant to the current generation of consumers and Doctor Who viewers than is necessary.