In terms of ownership, the commercial magazine industry most closely resembles the cable television business, which patterned its specialized channels on the consumer magazine market. Also, as in the cable industry, large companies or chains increasingly dominate the magazine business (see Figure 9.1). Even though about seven hundred to one thousand new commercial magazine titles appear each year—many of them independently owned—it is a struggle to survive in the competitive magazine marketplace.

Time Warner’s magazine subsidiary, Time Inc., is the largest magazine chain (by circulation) in the United States, with twenty-one major titles, including Time, People, and InStyle. (See “What Time Warner Owns”.) Although the Time Inc. magazines generate 21.5 percent of U.S. consumer magazine revenue, the magazine division has produced the lowest growth of all divisions for parent company Time Warner in recent years. In 2013, the media conglomerate announced that it would be spinning off its magazine unit as a separate company by the end of the year. (It wasn’t the first time Time Warner reduced its holdings; it spun off both Time Warner Cable and AOL in 2009.)

Long a force in upscale consumer magazines, Condé Nast is a division of Advance Publications, which operates the Newhouse newspaper chain. The Condé Nast group controls several key magazines, including Vanity Fair, GQ, and Vogue. Advance Publications also owns Parade magazine, the popular Sunday newspaper supplement that goes to thirty-three million homes each week. (Since Parade comes with newspaper subscriptions, it is not counted among most official magazine tallies.)

Other important commercial players include Rodale, a family-owned company that publishes health and wellness titles like Prevention and Men’s Health, and the Meredith Corporation, which specializes in women’s and home-related magazines. The Hearst Corporation, the leading magazine (and newspaper) chain early in the twentieth century, still remains a formidable publisher with titles like Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Elle, and O: The Oprah Winfrey Magazine.

In addition, a number of American magazines have carved out market niches worldwide. Reader’s Digest, Cosmopolitan, National Geographic, and Time, for example, all produce international editions in several languages. In general, though, most American magazines are local, regional, or specialized and therefore less exportable than movies and television. Of the twenty thousand titles, only about two hundred magazines from the United States circulate routinely in the world market. Such magazines, however, like exported American TV shows and films, play a key role in determining the look of global culture.

Many major publishers, including Hearst, Meredith, Time, and Rodale, also generate additional revenue through custom publishing divisions, producing limited-distribution publications, sometimes called magalogs, which combine glossy magazine style with the sales pitch of retail catalogues. Magalogs are often used to market goods or services to customers or employees. For example, Rodale produces the biannual Whole Foods Market Magazine magalog, which launched in 2012, and Time produces the quarterly myFord, distributed by the automobile company to buyers of its vehicles and also available digitally via the iTunes App Store.