The November 8th issue of the bi-weekly Transcontinental-published and printed magazine, The Hockey News marks its first as an all-glossy publication.



Publisher Caroline Andrews says the move to 45 lb glossy stock was planned from the time The Hockey News went from tabloid to magazine size three years ago. Admittedly, she says the move also makes advertisers happy – with many high-end advertisers opting out of the publication prior to the change in paper. “Many advertisers wanted to align with us, but didn’t because it was on newsprint,” she says. “All of the advertisers which weren’t participating before said they would support the magazine if it went glossy,” she says.

The result is a bump in advertising and pages, the first glossy issue comes in at 64, up from the usual 48-52 page books, says Andrews. “We are considerably over our advertising budget for the first two months of the next year,” she says.

Along with a change in paper comes some differences on the editorial and design side, says The Hockey News editor in chief Jason Kay. “Longtime readers will notice we have changed the NHL team report section,” he says. “Instead of having equal blurbs on each team from correspondents across North America we are going with seven or eight large stories and smaller blurbs on all 30 teams.” This change both brings the NHL team reports in-house and responds to reader feedback for more coverage in the section from a survey sent out during the summer.

From a design perspective, Kay says there is simply more content on each page and less white space. “We wanted to make better use of the pages we have so they feel more full, and are more full.”

The Hockey News is published bi-weekly by Transcontinental and has a readership of approximately 1.8 million according to the fall PMB report.