There actually is a place for magazines in the op-infotainment ecosystem, just not for this one.
From The Atlantic:
Time Inc Has a Big Problem—So Does Digital Journalism
As the storied magazine company returns to its inky origins, the future looks bright for digital journalism as a product, but dim for large-scale digital journalism as a business.
Time Inc, the mother of newsmagazines, was born in 1922. She survived wars and recessions, grew up to be fabulously rich by mid-century, married the media giant Warner
Communications, entered the golden years as one of the largest media companies in the world, suffered a mid-life crisis at the hands of AOL, and watched Warner Music Group and Time Warner Cable (both adopted offspring) graduate into independence. But today the circle of life closes its long arc, as Time Inc is starting over again as a pure publishing company, anxiously asking the same question it successfully answered 90 years ago: Are magazines the future?
The minute-to-minute gyrations of Time Inc's new public stock—debuting under the symbol: TIME—made today's noise. But I think we're all better off listening to the background music. With subscriptions hurting, newsstand sales falling, and advertising fleeing print, Time's publishing revenue has fallen in 22 of the last 24 quarters.
It's clear what getting rid of Time Inc will do for Time Warner. The publishing arm might have the name on the building, but the "Warner" divisions—cable channels, film, and TV entertainment—now account for more than 95 percent of the corporation's revenue and profit. Shedding the dead skin of print frees them from the conglomerate curse, where investors discount the value of complex corporations that comprise many different businesses with varying health.
Time Inc's path is more uncertain. Print, as a category, is in structural decline, a point this famous Mary Meeker graph clearly makes. Both time-spent and ad-spend in print are falling steadily.
For more data, I consulted MoffettNathanson, the great research firm that details $90 billion in annual ad spending. Here are the year-over-year ad figures across digital, TV, radio, outdoor, and print. Magazines aren't doing as poorly as newspapers. But cable TV and online ads—which together account for more than half of ad spending in the U.S.—account for practically all of the growth in the U.S. advertising business....MORE
