Black Friday For Print

[RockJustRock]

TEN killing 19 titles today. All but HR, MT and Four Wheeler. My response on FB:

Blame the web, BUT there shouldn't be 19 magazines to kill. Over diversification in the 80s and 90s was part of the end too. I bought EVERY performance magazine growing up, even Motor Trend if there was something fast on the cover. When Ford This, Chevy That and Mopar The Other Things from multiple publishers came along that ended. I could no longer try to know everything there was to be read. So in the 90s I got sidetracked and stopped reading. The internet actually brought my interest back. If there is REALLY interest in more than profit there will be ad supported internet versions of the magazines. Not enough material value in online subscriptions. Also there needs to be an electronic archive of ALL car magazines of the past, not just Petersen.

[70chevyC-10]

I was reading some small print in my last Hot Rog Mag where they are required to post their annual paid subscriptions, print totals, etc. If I was reading it correctly it looked to be a half a million. I would not have guessed it was that LOW a number. If I remember I'll bring it in and scan to post it here on Monday.

[tardis454]

I like reading print stuff in bed and/or on the toilet, them fancy ebook readers suck, it's not the same. Plus if you run out of TP you've got some shiny paper handy ;)

My biggest gripe with car mags is the constant barrage of checkbook builds. I don't have checkbook build money so the content the mags are putting out doesn't impress me in that aspect. Sure the craftsmanship and the finished product(s) are great, but I'll never be able to afford anything like that. I want blue collar builds like the ones the folks on this forum build in their garages & barns. SBG, STINEY, squirrel, 1946austin, Andy4639, to name a few do old school blue collar builds that are feasible, that I can can relate to, and that I can afford to do myself. There have been a handful of blue collar builds in Hot Rod over the last 5-10yrs, but most of the stuff I see every month is mega high dollar checkbook stuff. On a side note, Tony Defeo gets it right on his YouTube channel, use your brain, work with what you've got, don't spend money on stuff you don't need. I suspect he's just as disenchanted with the checkbook stuff as I am. If he started writing for a magazine again I'd buy the magazine he wrote for...

Hot Rod started out with war vets and young folks building jalopys out of junk on the cheap using good old fashioned ingenuity not checkbooks. Get back to the roots of the hobby and the readers might come back..

[Eric]

Print is dead,
Today to many things in it's way.
The cost to print it.
the greenie side of it.
waste of paper/trees as you can read it on line. and the shipping/ fuel use/etc.
but that didn't kill it.
like said above 19 titles. and lack of anything in them.
Not everyone is into the "muscle cars" and not everyone can afford the new bread of them.
Only so many ways you can rewrite how to build a small block ford/chevy/etc. or show tech of the same basic underpinning that has been in use for decades. and keep readers interest.

[SuperBuickGuy]

I subscribe to several, not sure I care they're gone...

newslink

https://www.foliomag.com/ten-publishing-shuttering-19-print-magazines/

[phitter67]

The two magazines I subscribe to are on the hit list. I enjoy sitting at night listening to music and reading. I guess my reading habits will change.

[Monster]

This was the very first year in several decades, that I've not had a single paid subscription.

[DanStokes]

I've subscribed to HRM for decades and mostly read it in the reading room ( john). Perfect for that. I understand that economics are pushing the industry that way but I like having a mag in my hands. I'm sorry for the folks who will be out of a job as a result of this but I suppose the money just isn't there anymore.

Dan

[70chevyC-10]

I scanned those subscription numbers but cannot get it to post here. I can send it in an e-mail attachment if someone knows how to make it post up.

[SuperBuickGuy]

What is ironic is the magazine that is the biggest problem - HRM - lives. HRM has become show cars, insider interviews, and 'look where I got to go' travelogs. Add the Dodge sponsorship, and HRM is circling the drain too.... then we get the Four Wheeler (or whichever they're keeping) aka 'the Jeep daily'.... more Dodge. I can't say I care they focus on Jeep, but Jeep isn't the entire industry, it's not even a majority of the 4x4 industry....

what I do think, though, is independants will pick up the slack. I really enjoy the Chevrolet mags (Super Chevy, etc), and just like the Corvette (not Vette) magazine, it will likely come back as an independent. Print isn't dead, print done by TEN is dead.

What will they look like? Overland Journal. Overland Journal doesn't do time sensitive stuff, they don't care about races, Rallys, but they do care about gear, and overland travel.... and they are not cheap, but they are doing just fine in this 'world where you can't print a magazine'...

TEN magazines, of whom MT, HRM are the two worse - tell the reader what to think. MT, I'm sure that's fine, but in an industry driven by creativity, and now existing in a century where "don't tell me what to do" is the song of most... it is epic fail. Four Wheeler is going the same way, they've latched onto Overlanding with the idea, mostly, that "Jeeps should be there too".... there are Jeeps, but they're the little brother you tolerate. Preaching Jeep overlanding (or worse, a 4 door pickup with a Roof Top Tent (a RTT) is moronic. Add the "we'll tell you what to think" and they're as dead as the rest.

And finally, subscriptions. The Pontiac Aztek was the car designed by committee (meaning, opinion)....

[squirrel]

Rodder's Journal also seems to be doing ok, if you're into traditional hot rods. Which is a rather small niche, too.

Making money is tough. I'm sure glad I don't have to do it.

[RockJustRock]

I reiterate my opening statement. The cause was not the web it was TEN and all the other managing groups in the fall of what was Petersen and the biggest automotive publishing empire. OF COURSE Hot Rod's content became jaded. Anything meaningful was shuffled into the "specialty" magazines we were expected to pay for ALONG WITH Hot Rod. Nobody gets involved with a special interest to just dabble in it. Deep down inside everyone wants to be an EXPERT. If selling information it is wise to exploit that intent without overcoming it.

[squirrel]

I subscribed to Street Rodder a long time ago, when they used to publish lots more real "how to" tech stuff, rather than the checkbook version of rodding.

Other than that, HRM is the only car mag I've ever subscribed to. And I don't seem to be looking at any of the back issues at all (I have a whole bunch of them), except those from before I subscribed--as a history lesson.

I won't claim to know the cause(s) of all these magazines going out of print. But it has seemed inevitable for a while.

[RockJustRock]

At one point you could know everything about street rodding by reading Rod and Custom. Then Street Rodder offered a second opinion. Then there were more. I stopped trying to keep track of "pre 48" with the rise of drag racing in the 70s and street machining in the 80s. Car Craft became my mainstay. I took a break and when I came back there was a garden variety Rambler American that wasn't that cool or fast on the cover..

[SuperBuickGuy]

When HRM started, they were like fashion magazines that highlighted style (and could do so because there was no rapid/worldwide immediate press). Times have changed, but they didn't... I've beat on them often enough that most here probably could recite it for me - however, here it is, HRM could be the final word on subjects; in a sense a historical record of what was cool at any given time. That said, reporters must be outside otherwise their own bias will show through. In this case, the last roadkill garage was all Mopar all the time.... great if you're a Mopar fan, boring if you're not - so all I wonder is what they will blame the failure of MTOD when that happens.

SEMA kind of opened my eyes at how narrow the entire publishing industry is - the last HRM had a Chrysler something or another that was at SEMA and wouldn't have made my top 100 list - and that's not just hyperbole, I didn't take a picture of it....

As Squirrel said, he subscribed when it was relevant to him.... I'm the same way, I'll subscribe until it's not relevant. At the moment, I can't get cable and the other options aren't really options - thus I subscribe to MTOD not for their content but for Discovery's. If Discovery was to offer their packages without MTOD, I'd buy it, and not the opposite....

I do laugh at publishing numbers because it's looked at from the "if we don't meet this number, we're dead" rather then "there's the number, now let's see if we can be profitable with it"....