The stats behind this week’s Case Study of Christian Science Monitor’s turn-around are fascinating. So often in the online publishing industry we assume that higher frequency is better. We ramp up the content production volume, hoping that more and more pages, and continual changing homepage headlines are the way to go.But then I remember the time when my father, a reader with a busy life, pestered the circulation department of Wired Magazine, among others, with requests for a lower-frequency subscription. “I’ll pay the same. Their stuff is good, I enjoy reading it, but I just can’t take the glut of incoming magazines. Isn’t there any way to just get every other issue?” No, there wasn’t. And he couldn’t bring himself just to throw away unread issues. Waste not, want not. So, at last he regretfully canceled his subscription.I thought he was a little extreme. Then I saw Christian Science Monitor’s stats. In 2008, their 100-year old daily newspaper, famed for editorial excellence, had 43,000 paying subscribers. As part of a radical turn-around detailed in the Case Study, the Monitor folded this beloved print daily and replaced it with a weekly print magazine.Nearly 75,000 subscribers now pay $13 a year for the weekly magazine. A 60% bump in paid circulation. From lowering frequency.Worth consideration — I don’t know anyone who ever cancelled a subscription because the content quality was too high. But too high content quantity may actually cost you subscriptions!