US magazines are showing a grunge homemaker trend. (Perspective).(Brief Article)

Welcome to the first in a new series entitled Fun Things That Columnists Do: this week it's poring over statistics of ad volumes for the American magazine market in 2001, assisted by my trusty props--a calculator, a wet towel round my head and a strong drink.

But to what point, you ask? Why depress ourselves any more? Well, advertiser dollars follow readers, albeit with a time lag. These readers in turn reflect broad social and media trends, many of which subsequently cross the Atlantic. So where American advertising budgets are going matters over here.

First, the broad picture. According to the numbers, the top 200 magazines posted an average 11.7 per cent drop in ad volumes for the year. Boring or what. Averages are for the hopeless, such as the statistician who drowned in a pool that was an average 12 inches deep.

As for the bad news, there are no prizes for guessing the biggest losers were the business magazines that, riding the new-economy zeitgeist, briefly assumed the dimension of telephone directories: Red Herring, Fast Company, Wired, etc --each down by 40-plus per cent. Add the general business magazines, anything to do with computers and technology and retail, and you have a fairly grim, if predictable, picture.

But let's concentrate on the bright spots because they, surely, give an idea of what may happen.

Perhaps the least surprising area is in ...