Post by Clare Fieseler, PhD / Redsky

It’s pains me what Gary Knell did to NG by selling it to Fox and then Disney.

feb 22, 2025, 2:06 pm • 0 0

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It's my understanding that as Society leadership saw things, the Fox deal was a unique opportunity to shore up the Society's long-term financial health. And they had a point: "Membership dues" (magazine subscriptions) and associated ad revenue had been in decline for 25 years by that point.

Chart showing historical subscriptions to National Geographic from 1900 to 2024. Subscriptions slowly grew from 1900 and reached 1 million in the mid-1920s. They then stayed more or less flat until the mid-1940s and quickly grew to 2 million by the early 1950s. From the early 1960s to the early 1980s, subscriptions grew at a roughly constant, meteoric rate, from 2.2 million in 1957 to more than 10 million by the early 1980s. Print subscriptions then start to decline from approximately 10 million in 1990 to fewer than 1 million today. From 1990 to today, newsstand sales and estimated digital subscriptions also grow, but not enough to offset long-term print declines. Total circulation (newsstand sales, print subscriptions, and digital subscriptions) is less than 2 million.

feb 22, 2025, 2:43 pm • 0 0 • view