I.P.C largest selling `weekly` magazines!

It might surprise thee to know, but in the 1960s and 1970s the largest selling `titles` of IPCs weekly issues weren't comics! nay! in early 1964 IPC purchased New Musical Express from Maurice Kihn and it sold over 2 million in 1964/5/6/7 & 8. By 1970 the NME was losing sales-fast! Over 1 million by late 1971! However! by 1970 Melody Maker, who covered `Progressive` music, surged ahead and by 1973 were selling well over 1 million per week! By 1977 the NME (as it was known then) bieng more in touch with `Punk` reclaimed top spot! No comic titles at IPC came anywhere near these figures!

It was the massive profits from NME & M.Maker that subsidised comics such as "Action" and, initially, "2000AD"

I think comic sales were falling steadily by the mid seventies, weren't they? Be interesting to know how much of IPC's overall sales came from the comics over the decades...

IPC were and probably still are [assuming they still exist] a vast conglomorate cartel, of which comics were but one 'arm'. The decision to axe their comics range was possibly just another corporate business decision brought about by 'suits' higher up, with no real interest in comics, who totted up the annual receipts and saw declining sales.

D C THOMSON is a big company, but still 'cottage industry' compared to IPC, and maybe this is still why they choose to still put out comics, even if sales are dwindling greatly.

IPC are indeed still in existence, though they're now IPC Media. Amongst their current output are Country Life, Horse & Hound, TV Times, What's On TV, Woman's Weekly, Chat, NME and Nuts.

But no comics.

IPC also produced `Disc and Music Echo` from 1966 after buying `Disc` (as it was called initially) from the `Charles Buchan` group. Disc and ME never really took off big in sales and IPC sold it to Billboard publications (the owners of `Record Mirror`) in the final week of August 1975.

Any of you have a chart showing the fluctuation of comic sales? it would be quite interesting to see.

Sadly, No! I think the British Library might have the data at their Colingdale branch that you reach via the `Northern Line`. I would love to know Sparky comics sales as it must have been close to cancellation circa 1966-67.

I actually know someone who works for the British Library. I might ask her to undertake a bit of research for us...

I beleive that what were once considered "very low" sales for a comic, around 30 years ago, are now considered "healthy". For instance i think the Beano sells much less than 100,000 copies every week (maybe only around 50,000), but if it had been selling that little in the 50's-70's they wouldn't have been able to drop it fast enough!

Same everywhere. In the 70's, an American comic selling 200, 000 would have been close to cancellation. Now, 50, 000 is quite respectable.

tony ingram wrote:I actually know someone who works for the British Library. I might ask her to undertake a bit of research for us...

The media directories at Colindale (on the shelves in front of the main desk) have the ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation) figures for some comics. The ones I have are featured at the Gerry Anderson Complete Comic History website:

http://www.technodelic.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Annuals/Comics.htm

I speculate it took about 18 months for a title to get its first figures. If a title ran for less than than that, figures are not usually available.

But presumably IPC must have had figures, at least a rough idea of sales? Was none of that kept if a title was pulled at 22 weeks?

tony ingram wrote:But presumably IPC must have had figures, at least a rough idea of sales? Was none of that kept if a title was pulled at 22 weeks?

Presumably yes, but how would you get access to them? The ABC ones are available if you plough through the directories and, I would also moot, be more accurate...

shaqui wrote:

tony ingram wrote:But presumably IPC must have had figures, at least a rough idea of sales? Was none of that kept if a title was pulled at 22 weeks?

Presumably yes, but how would you get access to them? The ABC ones are available if you plough through the directories and, I would also moot, be more accurate...

I'll ask Julie to take a look when she has some free time, see what she can dig up...

Incredible that the Beano sold around 2 million copies at it's peak in the 50s.........I remember I was saddened when I discovered it was down to 125,ooo a week, but even this figure appears as 'the good old days' today.......

MR X wrote:Incredible that the Beano sold around 2 million copies at it's peak in the 50s.........I remember I was saddened when I discovered it was down to 125,ooo a week, but even this figure appears as 'the good old days' today.......

Sad, but inevitable. A lot of kids just don't read anymore.