What has to stop is companies continually operating and giving bonuses on borrowed cash. It is a way to transfer wealth from investors to execs. then leave the banks, bond holders and stock holders holding worthless paper when they declare. It's BS. Used to be that you acquired wealth, paid off bills, loans etc. That was a measure of success. Not anymore. It's outta hand. Business should support their employees first, then reitrees second. Stock holders should be down the line and loans should be made and collected in good faith. It's upside down folks.
Don't EVER apologive for your passion! Without it none of us would be here right now! With it, the magazines might not be in this boat, too bad none of them had the vision you did at the end of the last century.
I agree, but they were covering muscle cars when they were brand new cars on the lot, just like they do now with Mustangs etc. I think they are doing the same thing they always have, we're just not interested in current models of cars.
Yep, I an old and most likely ignorant...especially about anything to do with HRM, in at least 5 years. I dropped my sub., probably 5 years before that...just for the reasons stated. Are you saying that they've improved the content, or that you enjoy all the Chevy oriented stuff? If you do enjoy the things they cover, that's great. I'm just trying to say that their statements grew old, ignorant... and boring to me.
The industry is getting blown up, you are right. In order for the print industry to survive you have to scale it down. You can't have 200 employees making a magazine or newspaper, you have to get back to basic, cut down the work force! The high advertising rates we have had in the past has blown the companies out of proportions...
I think you'd be very surprised at how many actual full-time employees each title at Source Interlink has. It's very small. They do a lot with a little.
You are dead-on about David F. I had the pleasure of hanging out with him at B'ville last year, he is a very passionate, down to earth gearhead with a talent for communicating it to the rest of us.
My example was actually based on my experience with the newspaper industry in Norway... they are also going through hard time these days But if they are so few full-times employees, why aren't they earning enough money? Is it because the owners don't think they earn enough?? If you were 5 people running R&C, and all of the 5 were owning the company I guess you would have earned pretty much money. But when the company is owned by this multi billion company, your revenue is just pocket change, and in order to maintain focus on the money machines they let loose the "dead weight"?
Up at the nsra in meet bakersfield the girl in the rag booth was trying real hard to get people to sign up or reup their subscriptions. glad i did not do that, hell i got in on the 8 buck promo a few months back now to see how that goes!
Just my $0.02. I used to subscribe to at least 5 mags a year. 3 auto related, 2 sport related. I bought them from family to help school programs. Last year all ran out and I only renewed one (the one that was not the same crap month after month). I only renewed it because I could not believe the price. Get this people, $10.00 for a three year subsricption (thats 28 cents per issue). No wonder times are hard.
Its a nasty circle they need to boost circulation to increase add revenue. When advertisers pull back beacuse of the economic downturn they still have to deliver those magazines at 20 cents per issue and they lose alot of money. Its a bad business model. Most of these magazines started out with great content and sold at full price, over the years advertising became more important than the content. Gary
Gotta agree with you there Ryan, It seems that when both you and Christian(Primer Magazine) came online with the e-zine idea, you were a decade ahead of The former Petersen, Primedia, Mc Mullen,Argus,and Challenge Publishers. Were talking getting the info right now! In a paper publication,one has to wait a several months to see coverage of a show that HAMBers post while the show is going on. It is Freaking Genius! Ads get to be very expensive for what there return is. Many paper publications have adverstising guys that will do a swap for product if the owner of the business will do it. It's a win for the magazine because they will use that product in a tech or feature project and people will buy the mag just to see what and how the product worked. The gamble for the advertiser is will the public step up for the part? When Veda Orr did her pictorial, the ads were for information and when the 1st Rod-Race related mast head of Throttle came out it was about the content. The HAMB has that and much more like imediate feedback and much more. I'd be lost w/o my pc and even recently I was down for a long while. Back in 98 when I originally joined the HAMB, I would read and barely comment on anything, when I shut my server down in 2000, I'd ocasionally come online to see what is happening. Work is where I came back online for good. Cyclone survives because of the HAMB. Ryan, you have supported us immensely and I thank you for that. This is the place to be and for a company be seen. Good luck to Source Interlink, I do hope that they survive because it would be a shame if we lost the paper mags, but open up the age of the PC as well, become more interactive
Man, this rings true of the mob mentality stated before. It's fashionable to trash Street Rodder. Some have very valid reasons, usually based on their preferences (which is what it's all about), MANY, MANY more, however, say SR sucks because of the bandwagon effect (or the one month they gave it a try, the STREET ROD ratio was not to their liking). To me, the content in Street Rodder is among the most consistent around. They have always had a wide range of hot rod styles, but like most things, there is an ebb and flow. Some cycles of SR have not hit me as hard as other cycles, there are too many factors (good and bad) that effect this phenomenon. I love the early (50's-60's) Hot Rod, R&C, Car Craft and the like, but my favorites are the ones I bought off the stands, when I first got into all this stuff. Safe to say, from beginning to present, ups and downs, I dig on the magazines and we still have a number of good titles! Print and digital media definitely co-exist in my little world.
I've read this entire thread again, and haven't seen any mention of just too many choices out there. Maybe some of the tough times are brought on by just too many choices out there? Whether its car magazines or orange juice, a lot of redundant choices can weaken a company trying to put out a fine effort. I mean, how many Mustang magazines do we need to choose from? I'm not proposing anything, just thinking out loud here. Seems theres sometimes only so much playing field out there sometimes.
So why can't magazines go back to being individually owned and operated? Those are the ones that still have the passion. Those are pretty much the only ones I still buy!
2.4 billion in assets - 1.9 billion in debt = .5 Billion left. They just don't want to pay that out, a lot of little guys will get screwed!!! You go bankrupt you should not be in bussiness period!!!!
I think the problem is they let this debt build up through the loans to cover all these takeovers and mergers and built a house of cards supported by advertising dollars. With people not buying as much companies are cutting back on advertising. Suddenly they have to find a new way to pay all the bills for those three year subscriptions at 27 cents per issue, and the other crazy deals they handed out in the past. Not to mention at least pay the interest on the debt, the employees, the light bill, etc. Houston, we have a problem. The other problem is with all these titles lumped into one owner, where's the drive for one title to be better than another? I used to read Stock Car Racing but I dropped it when it went to this company and Dick Bergerren left for a new magazine. It became little more than a clone of Circle Track. They wanted return on their investment, they should have sold the title off to Bergerren to run independent, instead they not only had two in-house competing mags, they got a third one out there to take share away from both of them. The same goes for other magazines all put together, they tried to make Custom Rodder a go but ended up folding that back into Street Rodder (not the first time that's happened) because it couldn't compete with the other titles anymore. When all that stuff ended up under one roof, along comes Buckaroo Publications with a batch more titles and dividing up the market that much more. It's an assinine way to run a business, that's for sure. Bigger is not always better, but I fail to understand why people can't just accept continuing to make a reasonable profit on a business and making a living, why instead they have to grow, grow, grow until they implode. Even everyone's favorite Ol' Skool Rodz has gone to cheaper paper for some of the content to save a buck. And the place I usually get my magazines doesn't help, they've been doing a shitty job putting them out, they miss entire issues, put them out late, and leave old ones out so long sometimes two more issues have come out since. When you buy one in a store, those are retail like everything else - it's been a while since I saw what the costs are, but some places discount them a bit. So that entire $5 or $6 cover doesn't go to the magazine people. But in the end if they all go away, they go away. I have stacks and stacks, hell I keep a stack of magazines in the john two feet high that range from brand new to the early '50s.
Two changes will result from the demise of our current economic woes: The "playing field" will forever be leveled;.....The Financial Goliaths of the past will be unable to prevail over the many markets they controlled in the past. Future COMPETITION for markets will force ALL of these entities to resort to focusing on both product quality & services as well. If they fail to competently compete with others in their marketing field, they will simply have to fold and disappear. Whoever provides the best products and services in the future will literally dominate whatever market they operate in. No longer will anyone have to tolerate the "Corporate Arrogances" of the past. These companies will either listen to the needs of their customer base, or fall on their face. IMO, this entire phenomenon is a blessing in disguise!
It's because these businesses that we are talking about are beholden to share holders. That leads to the next problem that is reflected in society as a whole which is the desire, nay, demand for instant gratification. That demand for instant gratification extends from people buying things they don't have the money for to the investments that people make. People invest in a company and they want results now. If that doesn't happen, 'Fire the CEO, restructure, do whatever you have to do, just give me a HIGH return on my investment'. To clarify, I'm not against "big business" or shareholders.
You apparently don't have that comprehension! As I stated I wasn't defending the carb, or Speedy Bill for that matter. I only used that thread as an example because of how ridiculous it was and how long it when on before there was any actual research done. My point was how many people make comments about a product or company with absolutely no basis in fact. Kind of like the assumptions you made in your comments. I never bashed anyones research but I will take issue with opinions that are not based in at least a modicum of fact. I think it's great when someone posts a rational discussion of a product or company because they have actually dealt with that product or company. But there are too many people that just dribble out garbage that they have heard from others or say every part made overseas is crap (many are, some aren't) or all new cars are crap, etc. Blah Blah Blah. And as for your personal attack, maybe you should grow up a little.
Well, buying stock is not like buying a lottery ticket.. it takes time for companies to grow. I'm not an investment guru and I get it -
Content, quality, performance, customer satisfaction, good value - mostly the same thing regardless of the industry or product. Ryan is right. Sell a product that performs and people will advertise it for you. And that is the kind of advertising you can't buy. I figure it like this - take care of your employees first, then take care of your customers, then mind the financials. Generally, if you do the first, the employees will do the second and the third becomes a fait accompli.
I wasn't going to post on this thread, but a call from an old colleague (we worked at McMullen and Yee, K3, Primedia together) got my blood boiling. Every time they absorbed a new company and rolled over a person's retirement they invested in their own stock. Well, now that stock is worthless and some of the people who didn't reinvest in a Roth IRA or roll that money into a 401k are just out of luck... This info came from a reliable source that was laid off after almost 30 years selling ads for different publishing companies that eventually were all absorbed by Source Interlink. He cashed everything out just in the nick if time...
The Jalopy Journal
