Although circulation has been basically stable at about 920,000, the average price per issue on subscriptions has been dropping steadily, which means Forbes — like a lot of magazines — is fighting to hang on to its subscribers.

Ad pages are down 15 percent in the first quarter, compared with the period a year earlier. Forbes.com, one of the top five financial sites by traffic, throws off an estimated $70 million to $80 million a year in revenue, but never yielded the hoped-for public offering.

Forbes’s misery certainly has plenty of company among its competitors. Ad pages have declined even more at Fortune and BusinessWeek. Revenue figures from the Publishers Information Bureau, a generally inflated index, listed revenue of over $338 million for Forbes, $276 million for Fortune and $236 million for BusinessWeek.