Eddie - I agree with you 99%... I've been fishing for 14 years now, and have bought weekly/monthly publications all that time (Christ knows what they've cost me, but hey! I have to have SOMETHING to read at work!)
(I can't comment on Angling Times, btw, as I don't read it - Angler's Mail, in it's magazine format, is much more ''manageable'')
Leaving the weeklies aside though, I have to admit that I'm getting bored of reading the same old thing in monthlies, over and over... unfortunately, that's the nature of the beast; ''breakthroughs'' happen on an annual basis, rather than daily - to broaden your fishing horizons you have to broaden your reading horizons; I would class myself (if I had to) as a pleasure angler/specimen hunter (emphasis firmly on ''pleasure'', mind!), so I read (with equal gusto) specimen-fishing magazines, match-fishing magazines, ''general'' magazines... even fly-fishing magazines (which I intend doing a LOT of this coming season - as you seem to be getting at, it's something ''new'')
BUT... not everyone's like us, with a bit of experience behind us - all periodicals realise that there are newcomers to our sport all the time, and they have to cater for them; something you and I might have read 6 months ago, someone just coming into the sport won't be aware of... I can't speak for anyone else, but when I got the fishing ''bug'' all those years ago, I spent the entire pre-season that year with my nose buried in anything even vaguely related to fishing, trying to learn all I could about it (Maybe that's why I don't get ticked-off if I'm stuck behind a learner driver - I was there once myself...)
BUT... You're dead right when you talk about the over-exposion of commercial/carp fisheries, and tactics for them; it's got to the point now where I skip most articles related to this style of fishing in anything I'm reading at the time because I'm sick and tired of having it rammed down my throat that that is the ''only'' way to fish (or so it seems)...
BUT... to produce a periodical costs money; the people and companies who put out these things that I still (VERY happily, I hasten to add - after all, I'll never say I know it all) pay good money to read need to get a return for their investment, so they go where the money is; and, like it or not, commercial fisheries are big business; day ticket revenue at a ''guaranteed'' bag-up venue will always exceed what you would bring in financially if you were to sell a few dozen syndicate tickets for a venue where you might catch a potential record (which no doubt would have been ''stocked'' anyway!)
Hehe - hard to believe, reading what I've put in, that I totally agree with your sentiments! But to summarise (finally, I know...!) I don't think standards are dropping in weeklies/monthlies... but running out of things to say? For us... yes, but imagine how hard it would have been for us if we'd not had the chance to read this stuff for the first time when we got started...
Tight lines
James