David Bruce Murray
Feb 12, 2008
In The News|Observations
CCM Magazine Bites The Dust
Salem Communications announced last month that CCM magazine will cease to exist after the April 2008 issue.
Jim Cumbee, President of Non-Broadcast Media for Salem Communications and Publisher of CCM Magazine said, “CCM Magazine readers tell us they want more information and want it faster than can be delivered in a monthly printed magazine. Accordingly, we will discontinue the printed version of CCM Magazine to put increased energies toward the continued growth and enhancement of our comprehensive Christian music and entertainment online network featuring CCMMagazine.com, ChristianMusicPlanet.com, CMCentral.com and MyCCM.org.”
For almost 30 years, CCM Magazine has been the preeminent voice of the Christian music scene. Cumbee continued, “We are excited to continue our commitment to great writing and thorough coverage, but now all of that will come to the readers on Internet time.”
The press release states that Singing News, Homecoming Magazine and other Salem print publications will not be affected. There’s two ways to look at this, given Cumbee’s statement. If the CCM story is as positive as Cumbee makes it out to be, why aren’t Singing News et al worthy of getting this always-fresh-from-great-writers’-laptops, “internet time” access? If you’re a fan of the printed format, though, I’m sure you’re breathing a sigh of relief…at least for the moment.
A few observations:
1. We are constantly told that CCM artists sell much more product than Southern Gospel artists, yet CCM fans won’t buy enough copies of their leading magazine to keep it in print. Meanwhile, Southern Gospel and Gaither fans (which includes some overlap) support two magazines. That’s interesting. When was the last time you attended a concert where CCM magazine subscriptions were being offered for sale at the artist’s table?
2. The death of CCM magazine should not come as a huge surprise. They lost me when they went to a large, oddball sized format.
3. CCM magazine’s challenge was to constantly appeal to a moving target. Singing News and Homecoming magazines attract the type of subscribers who will keep renewing their subscriptions for the rest of their lives.
4. I don’t buy the “our readers want their info faster” line. I haven’t looked at a copy of CCM in years, but there was a time when CCM was a leading print publication due to well-written feature articles, CD reviews, chart data, and the publication of a concert schedule for all the leading artists. Over the years, they dropped some of this content for various reasons while the quality of other areas came into question. Ultimately the readership declined…big surprise.
Of course, the big concern for readers of this blog is whether or not this is a coming trend that will affect magazines like Homecoming and Singing News in time. In one sense, you could say the handwriting is on the wall and this is the first change of many to come. People who envision a future where all media will be internet media funded by ads and free to consumers are nodding their heads right now.
On the most practical of levels, though, it should come down to circulation and advertising income. As long as Singing News and Homecoming sustain a level of circulation that is sufficient to please Salem, those print mags should keep rolling off the presses…at least in theory.
We now know that 70,000 copies (Salem’s own figure) per month is a breaking point. That figure makes me wonder if CCM really wasn’t performing at a profitable level, or if Salem is just growing tired of the complications involved with printing stuff on paper. If the latter should happen to be the case, their other magazine titles also face a very real possibility of extinction.
