Family Circle, a pillar of women's magazines, will shut down after 87 years

[Demovictory9]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/family-circle-pillar-women-s-magazines-will-shut-down-after-n1067901

Family Circle, a pillar of women's magazines, will shut down after 87 years
The publication becomes the third of the once-dominant Seven Sisters of women's magazines to close, joining Ladies' Home Journal and McCall's.

Family Circle, one of the venerable Seven Sisters of cozy home magazines, will shut down after it sends its December issue to its millions of subscribers, its publisher said Wednesday.

Meredith Corp., which bought Family Circle in 2005, also owns similar magazines like Better Homes & Gardens, Real Simple, Magnolia, Martha Stewart Living and Southern Living, many of them acquired when the company bought Time Inc.'s magazine assets in 2017.

Meredith said at the time that it hoped to generate $500 million in new revenue through cost cuts and sales.

Family Circle had slightly more than 4 million subscribers at the end of June, the last period for which complete figures were available, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. Those customers will get other magazines from the company's stable, Meredith said.

Family Circle, which was founded in 1932, was classed as one of the leading women's interest magazines in American publishing, along with Ladies' Home Journal, McCall's, Good Housekeeping, Better Homes and Gardens, Woman's Day and Redbook — making up the so-called Seven Sisters. McCall's went out of business in 2002, and Ladies' Home Journal ceased publication in 2014.

[bobbieinok]

1. Losing a staple. Used to buy and read it often.

[Demovictory9]

15. My mom got all those "ladies" mags

I read them

[Sherman A1]

2. Sad, but a sign of the times

With changing demographics and technology.

[EricaGriswoldAuthor]

3. never bought those magazines

I was always bored with them. If you want to find recipes, you can just find them for free on Pinterest and YouTube.

[Spider Jerusalem]

4. You're clearly too young to remember the world before the internet (n/t)

[EricaGriswoldAuthor]

8. I remember...

I was 8 when we got internet.

[sinkingfeeling]

10. I'm bored to death with Pinterest and YouTube.

[woodsprite]

12. Anything can be put on Pinterest.

If you wanted a reliable, good tasting, family-proven recipe, look no further than Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, or one of the other publications.

[irisblue]

14. I remember reading fiction in my moms LHJ in the 60s.

She & neighbor ladies passed them around. They were a big deal for the home staying Moms.

[Demovictory9]

16. There was no inter net

[Celerity]

5. only Family Circle I know is McVities biscuits

[Vinca]

6. I used to buy it for recipes and crafty ideas. Sadly it slowing turned into mostly advertising.

[luvs2sing]

7. I'm still cooking recipes from old Family Circle magazines.

I haven’t purchased one in at least twenty years, but I have fond memories of my mother reading them and feeling so grown up when I bought my first copy.

Seems a lot of magazines are going away. Just last year, my favorite, Cooking Light, stopped monthly publication. Sign of the times..

[samnsara]

9. we always had a copy of that magazine at home!

...but honestly I havent sat down to read a magazine in years.

[yardwork]

11. My mom, who is in her 80s, subscribes to Family Circle.

The subscription costs less than $10 a year, and the issues are almost 100% advertising. Inside each issue are postage paid insert cards to receive subscriptions to about a dozen other magazines published by this company, all costing about $10 a year for monthly issues that come in the mail. They're all the same - mostly advertising. Mom likes to scan the issues.

I expect that most of the subscribers are older women. I think the main source of revenue for this company is advertising and sales of subscription lists. Mom gets a ton of junk mail - catalogs of products aimed at her demographic. Fancy holiday food, clothes, books, dvds, seasonal home decorations, etc.

[IndyOp]

13. We renewed my mother-in-law's subscription until she passed at age 93.

I don't think she read them for the past few years - but it would have been really strange not to have a few copies sitting on the edge of her footstool.

[lpbk2713]

17. My mother would pick one up at the grocery store checkout.

About 60 years ago. I remember because she hardly ever failed to buy an issue.

[eleny]

18. My mom, too

Woman's Day and Family Circle. I think they came out every three weeks. I liked reading them, too. Home Ec articles, recipes, fiction stories.

When I grew up I also got them at the grocery. I have a couple of pages in plastic protector sheets that was from an article about herbs and spices. What foods to pair them with.

And back in the late 70s there was a set of crochet instructions to crochet a Civil War era mourning shawl. It's a shawl that's on display in the Smithsonian. They figured out how to make one and published about it. I crocheted the shawl and thought I saved the pages I tore out. But I haven't been able to find the article. I know it's buried in my collection of instructions over the decades. At least I still have the shawl!

[yardwork]

19. It's sad that none of that fun content exists anymore.

These "women's magazines" were the internet of their day.