Seven months after scrapping its iconic oversized format, the biweekly publication will enter the video game business with the May 26 release of Rolling Stone: Drum King, produced by 505 Games for the Nintendo Wii.

Drum King, a rhythm-action game in the same vein as Guitar Hero, is part of an effort by the biweekly magazine to hitch its brand to a growing medium at a time when print is contracting. In the first quarter magazines tracked by Publishers Information Bureau sold nearly 26 percent fewer ad pages than the same period last year. Rolling Stone’s pages fell 22.5 percent for the period.

Lately the Wenner Media title has been pushing its name elsewhere to offset declines in revenue from the magazine. After Barack Obama was elected, the publisher sold some 300,000 “bookazines,” glossy compilations of its coverage of the Presidential race, at $9.95 apiece.

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Those numbers come from the Publishers Information Bureau and they probably understate the case: The revenue numbers are based on publishers’ rate cards, which are usually a polite fiction to begin with. So when you look a the title-by-title numbers provided by the Magazine Publishers of America, assume that things are worse than they seem.

So that can’t be good for the two publications that logged the biggest drops I could see at first glance: U.S News and World Report, down 68.8 percent, and Condé Nast’s Portfolio, down 60.9 percent. But those titles have had struggles for quite a while. Not so stalwarts like People, which has been a reliable moneymaker for Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc. But that title saw a 13.7 percent drop, too.

What’s coming up? A few publishers have told me that their Q2 doesn’t look substantially worse, which qualifies as good news these days. What doesn’t: Some publishers also tell me that some of their Q2 ad pages reflect ad budgets that were committed many months ago, timed to product launches and other events that can’t be scrapped. So it’s hard to tell if we’re even level yet.

A better indicator: how many more publishers go back for another round of layoffs, as Forbes did last month.

What prompted Time Inc. to drop six percent of its staff?

Time Warner (TWX) won’t release its most recent quarterly results until next week. But you can get a pretty good sense of how its publishing unit has been doing by looking at the numbers that Iowa-based magazine giant Meredith Corp. (MDP) just released.

And it’s grim.

Revenues at Meredith’s publishing unit, which puts out titles like Better Homes and Gardens and Ladies’ Home Journal (that ad above is from a 1972 issue) dropped nine percent in the last year, to $300 million. But ad revenues fell much more steeply, dropping 18 percent to $148 million. And operating profit plummeted 40 percent, to $33 million.

The good news in the earnings release is that there are still operating profits. But these are worrisome results.

So far this year, most of the ad-based businesses that have complained about declining revenues have pointed to weakness in the financial and auto industries. But Meredith’s publications don’t rely on those sectors for their ads.

From the release:

Companies that operate in Meredith’s endemic advertising categories–including food and beverages, prescription and non-prescription drugs, and home–have been impacted greatly by the current economic downturn. Combined, Meredith magazine advertising revenues in these categories declined over 25 percent in the first quarter, according to Publishers Information Bureau (PIB).”

Not surprisingly, Meredith says that the current quarter looks depressing too. Publishing ad revenues are “down in the high teens” it says.

So, don’t be shocked to see equally lousy news from Time Inc. next week.

[Image Credit: jbcurio]