A 100 word excerpt chosen out of “Sport Fishing” contained 5 sentences and roughly 126 syllables. Based on the ratio of sentences to syllables in this magazine, the excerpt scored a 12 on Fry’s readability graph, meaning that it is likely written at a 12-year-old’s reading level. The range of ages on the chart spans from 6-19 years. So Sport Fishing seems to be somewhat intermediate. However, in comparison to Sports Illustrated, the score was a little inferior. Sports Illustrated scored a 14 on Fry’s readability graph, about two reading levels above Sport Fishing.
The advertisement to actual content ratio in this magazine as a whole was also fairly interesting. There was almost two times as much ad space as there was actual content. The final ratio of ads:actual content was 5:3. These numbers were taken from whole pages, but in consideration of the facts that an article can take up to five pages and multiple ads can fit on a page, this balance is likely even more uneven. There is probably around three times more ads as there is articles in this magazine. Which is bizarre. Because people who pay for these magazines are essentially paying to watch commercials. A prototypical reader of this magazine, Sport Fishing, is most likely male. The typical age is probably between 25-35 or 55-65, in which age brackets there may be more free time. Older men who are retired and younger men who don't have ridiculously time consuming careers. What's peculiar,however, is that you would think that people who fit those criteria would have a higher reading level. Granted, the magazine regards a typically leisurely sport, but it's still a little surprising that these writers aim so low for their readers.
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