It’s always been one of those trick questions that kids of a certain age love: “What’s black and white and read all over?” The answer, of course, is “a newspaper,” but nowadays we could drop the letter “a” from the word “read” and the joke would still make a grim kind of sense.

That newspapers are failing is no longer news, but spend a moment looking over the latest advertising page data for U.S. magazines, and ask yourself a new question: “What’s four-color, glossy, and red all over?” (There’s also a natural followup for, of all places, the BBC. More on that below.)

Let’s just parse the industry into the segments MediaWeek analyst Will Levith uses, and look at how advertising pages in magazines’ current issues compare to the same period last year:

• Bridal Magazines (5 titles): -7.88 percent
• Business/Finance (15): +2.68 percent
• Entertainment/Celebrity (13): -16.02 percent
• Enthusiast/Sports (30): -11.53 percent
• Fashion/Beauty (13): -18.33 percent
• Food/Epicurean (8): -18.34 percent
• General Interest (12): -14.88 percent
• Men’s (18): +3.96 percent
• Newsweeklies (5): -40.32 percent
• Parenting (11): -0.09 percent
• Regional (3): -5.98 percent
• Science & Tech (8): -3.58 percent
• Shelter (23): -6.75 percent
• Teen (6): -10.78 percent
• Travel (6): +2.08 percent
• Wealth (2): + 10.31 percent
• Weekend (3): -24.92 percent
• Women’s (15): -16.38 percent

Just in case you don’t happen to have your calculator handy, the bottom line for 196 magazines across 18 categories is a 9.14 percent drop.

We don’t want to leave you on a down note, so this, too, is just in: The BBC now plans to launch a new U.S. magazine for readers who have “a curious mind.” As part of the launch, it intends to mail out 1.5 million “promotional items,” according to the Guardian.

Dear BBC: So, I have a curious mind. My question for you is, “Why now?”

Image by Flickr user CarbonNYC, CC 2.0