Branded parenting magazines seeing rebound. (Media & Technology).

After a grueling stretch in the publishing industry that saw several players in the parenting niche wither and die, Walt Disney Co. is among a handful of survivors finding success with magazines aimed at parents of young children.

Its Family Fun magazine, which focuses on activities, games and stories promoting quality time between parents and kids, boosted its paid circulation by more than 1.5 million between June and December 2002, according to Audit Bureau of Circulations data released this month, an increase of more than 10 percent.

For the year, Family-Fun upped its average page count by 14 percent and revenue jumped to $68.3 million, an increase of 28.2 percent over 2001, Disney officials said.

A good portion of the advertising in FamilyFun comes from other Disney divisions, although ad pages have begun to fill recently with the likes of Kraft Foods, Unilever, McDonald's and Hewlett-Packard.

"There's been a big shakeout in the past three or four years in this category of magazine. It's really been survival of the fittest," said Glenn Rosenbloom, senior vice president and group publishing director of Disney Publishing Worldwide, the Burbank-based media giant's publishing arm. "These are large companies, so it's not a matter of resources. It's been a difficult environment."

The glut of parenting magazines was fueled by the success in the early 1 990s of Parents magazine and Parenting Magazine. Those publications, owned by Gruner & Jahr USA Publishing and AOL-Time Warner respectively, each have circulation in excess of 2 million and remain the largest magazines of their kind.

In 2000, when the Internet bubble burst, magazine ad spending dived and page counts fell precipitously at many publications, including those in the parenting niche. Among the parenting magazines to disappear from newsstands over the past three years were those with strong brand identities, like Sesame Street Parents, published by Sesame Workshop and Crayola Kids from Meredith Publishing Group.

Besides gains made in by Disney in 2002, Viacom Inc.-owned Nickelodeon increased the circulation of its Nick Jr. Family Magazine by 27 percent, to 487,000 copies, according to ABC, the largest jump among parenting magazines. And while that still trails the market leaders by a substantial amount, Nick Jr. is the baby of the bunch, having launched its first issue in 1999.

"(Parenting) has been a relatively healthy category. It's bucked the trend of the overall industry;' said Dan Sullivan, senior vice president and group publisher for Nickelodeon Magazine Group. "But it's still a crowded category and we've tried to carve out a vision for ourselves that separates us from everyone else."

In promoting their magazines, both Disney and Nickelodeon have used their respective marketing muscles, including commercials on radio and TV and ads on videocassettes, DVDs and at amusement parks an in other print publications.

"This is a very targeted way to reach out to moms, who are the most important factor in buying decisions for products targeted at kids under five," said Nancy Zweier, president of Funosophy, a Long Beach marketing firm that specializes in toy companies. "Both Disney and Nickelodeon have earned a lot of brand credibility."

Because parents of young children are often busy, they are unlikely to read as many magazines as other segments of the population. That makes the brand recognition that comes along with a Disney or Nickelodeon publication so crucial.

"With what's going in the world right now, there's a movement to embrace what's most important - which many people would define as home and family," Rosenbloom said. "We want to build a relationship between the reader and the magazine that's based on that."