{"id":4600,"date":"2015-09-22T10:00:04","date_gmt":"2015-09-22T14:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/?p=4600"},"modified":"2015-09-25T15:59:47","modified_gmt":"2015-09-25T19:59:47","slug":"who-read-the-pulps-in-1937","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/2015\/09\/22\/who-read-the-pulps-in-1937\/","title":{"rendered":"Who read the pulps in 1937?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a>I’ve always wondered just who<\/em> read the pulp magazines.<\/p>\n

You hear comments that kids read the hero pulps, or that women read the romances, or that men read Adventure<\/a><\/em>. Some of that can be correlated in the letters columns, but I like to see the numbers.<\/p>\n

So when I was looking back through some old files last week, this tidbit from Feb. 25, 1937, caught my eye:<\/p>\n

Men comprise 61.8 percent of the readership of pulp magazines and women 38.2 percent, according to a survey, “Who Reads the Newsprint Fiction Magazine?” released yesterday by Street & Smith Publications Inc.<\/a> The study was based on interviews with 1,500 magazine buyers at newsstands in 25 cities. Of the men readers, 27.9 percent were in the 20 to 25 age class and 18 percent under 20. Among women, 26.2 percent were in the 20 to 26 age classification, with the second largest group, 20.3 percent, in the 41 to 50 age division. The median age for all readers was 27.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For many years the “all important” age demographic<\/a> for the movie industry was the 18- to 25-year-old male (and may still be based on the summer’s tentpole movies). According the S&S’s survey, 47.9 percent of male pulp readers — or 29.6 percent of total readers — were in that key group.<\/p>\n

This survey was conducted during the height of the pulp magazines’ popularity. I’d be curious to know if the demographics were different in the 1910s or ’20s, or in the 1940s. <\/p>\n

I wish I had a copy of the complete survey results. I’m sure it would be very interesting to read.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/strong><\/span> I contacted the Special Collections Research Center of the Syracuse University Libraries, where the Street & Smith archives<\/a> is housed. Unfortunately, they could find no evidence or reference to the survey in the archives. Maybe it will turn up somewhere else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve always wondered just who read the pulp magazines. You hear comments that kids read the hero pulps, or that women read the romances, or that men read Adventure. Some of that can be correlated in the letters columns, but I like to see the numbers. So when I was looking back through some old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"At Yellowed Perils: Who read the pulps in 1937? #pulpmags","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[40,11],"tags":[],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-4600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pulp-history","category-pulps"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2qgXO-1cc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4600"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4636,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4600\/revisions\/4636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4600"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=4600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}