What kills magazines
The end of the weekly 6Toros6 shortly after the pandemic shut life down last year was easily foreseen, and had little to do with coronavirus.
As any journalist knows, the financial health of a magazine depends less on the number of readers and more on the number of advertisers. The death of 6Toros6 was a prolonged affair, heralded by a reduction in paper size and accordingly less text, with some of the main ferias barely covered at all as a consequence. But the main indicator was the very small number of pages taken up with advertisements compared to in its heyday. Its weekly rival, Aplausos, continued to hold up well in comparison.
But the onset of coronavirus brought a temporary halt to Aplausos’ appearance as a magazine, the proprietors relying instead on the publication’s website, which had always been more developed than that of 6Toros6.
2021 has seen the revival of Aplausos as a magazine, albeit as a monthly periodical relying more on feature articles and lengthy interviews than on news pieces. It continues to be a boon to aficionados.
But there are worrying signs. Earlier this year, the proprietors opted to monetise part of their website, and there is now a Premium section where paying subscribers can access articles that aren’t available to non-payers. And the numbers of pages devoted to advertisements in the paper magazine are reducing - the July issue carries just one page, an advertisement for Huelva’s feria.
Why should this be of any interest other than to readers of Aplausos, you may ask? Well, the mundillo is always complaining about the lack of coverage los toros gets in the mainstream media. If it allows the last remaining national taurine periodical to disappear, there will be no consistent, ongoing coverage of the world of the bulls in Spanish publications at all. The story of each temporada will disappear into a morass of occasional, disjointed reports of individual corridas in the national and local press, with little overview.
The mundillo needs to foster afición in order to have a future. Part of this is ensuring that a regular publication focused on los toros continues to be available from one’s local kiosk by investing in it and making use of the advertising opportunities it offers.