Body Boarding Magazine to Become Annual

After riding a wave of success over the last few years, Body Boarding magazine has changed to an annual format because of decreasing advertising revenue, said David Gilovich, editorial director of the San Clemente-based publication.

The decreasing advertising convinced Gilovich to switch the magazine to an annual publication after its September issue. Six staff members were dismissed, he said.

“With the general state of our economy, it wasn’t much of a decision,” Gilovich said. “The issues just kept getting smaller and smaller.”

Besides the annual issue, which will begin publication next summer, Body Boarding’s sister publication, Surfing magazine, will devote three pages of each issue to coverage of bodyboarding.

Gilovich said the 11,000 Body Boarding subscribers will be transferred to Surfing, which has a circulation of 116,000.

The magazine “is not dead,” he said. “We’re just reducing it.”

The magazine began in 1985 with four issues annually and had grown to eight issues this year. Body Boarding had boasted as many as 132 pages over the last two years. But the September issue has only 76 pages.

“We’ve all been feeling the effects of the recession,” Gilovich said.