From: njs@scifi.uucp (Nicholas J. Simicich)
Subject: Re: Skin Diver Magazine
Organization: Nick Simicich, Peekskill, NY
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 03:27:13 GMT

In article <1992Jul27.191609.26976@bmerh85.bnr.ca> scribler@bnr.ca writes:
>I have to agree that SDM is just a large pretty
>advertisement (this includes any so called articles).
>However I can see the problem with comparing products.
>If a magazine says this company has a better product
>or this location is better than another, the magazine
>will no longer be given the opportunity to review
>the location/equipment again. It's also difficult to
>say that this product sucks but the next page you
>see an advertisement for the same product (conflict
>of interest from the view of the manufacture - who
>really pays the bills for the mag. company).
>As for resorts, any mag. will see a resort through
>"rose coloured glasses" because they will be given
>the up most service so a good report is written.
>I guess you have to take everything with a gain of
>salt.

You know, I used to read a lot of photography magazines.  They
included things like objective tests of lens resolution power, reports
of teardowns, how the camera was built, what was electronic, what was
mechanical, and so forth.  Sometimes thay even say that they didn't
like this or that.  They also had head-to-head comparisons.  The
camera makers still advertised.

I also read computer magazines that review products and are quite
critical, on occasion, of certain products.  As long as the criticism
is even-handed and accurate, the advertisers come back.  Unless they
are shipping crap, in which case they go out of business after a
while, and there are new advertisers.

In Scuba magazines, there are objective measurements such as 'all the
air you'll ever need'.  Brightly colored boxtops.  23% warmer (than
what?).

The advertisers may pay the bills for the magazine.  But they aren't
going to pay the bills if there aren't any subscribers.  The magazine
has to do things that attract subscribers.

For too long, SDM has been (almost) the only game in town.  Their goal
was to maximize advertising revenue.  Given that they didn't have to
worry about subscriber base, the only hope of increasing revenues was
to milk the advertiser base, by offering sweet deals, tie-ins, and,
according to the folks at Ocean Realm, telling people (at the Las
Vegas DEMA) that Ocean Realm was sold out of ad space for the rest of
the year so that people would advertise in SDM instead.

Now, with essentially one advertising market, a retailer could decide
to spend advertising dollars on display ads in a magazine, or they
could decide to spend their money on direct mailing, courting dealers
with incentives, and so forth.  But there was no significant choice in
where to put the advertising dollars.  And after a certain point, the
products had to have a presence in the mags.  Scubapro learned that:
They recently abandoned their in-house organ for ads in the major
magazines.  (Interestingly enough, Scubapro would not do in their own
magazine what Skin Diver would do for them: put in editorial stuff
extolling their equipment.)

Now, supposing that you are some new, start-up publication.  You are
selling ads to the same folks that the more established magazine is
selling ads to.  You go to your advertisers and say, "Well, we are
going to have a new magazine, and it is going to attract subscribers
who are tired of the established magazines.  We are going to be
informative, and so forth."

The advertisers say, "Fine.  The established magazine gives us x
column inches of positive editorial space for every y pages of ads we
buy.  What is your policy on that?"

There is actually a code of practice for magazine editors.  It forbids
the failure to label advertisement space as such.  It has little force.

If no one played these games, if everyone reviewed equipment fairly
and competitively, then advertisers would have no choice.  They could
decide to advertise, or they could decide to print sales brochures.
If the circulation leaders had this policy, then what the little mags
did would matter little.  But the circulation leader sets the standard
for the industry, and it seems to be a low one.

What I am personally hoping is that there is new competition.
Rodale's Scuba Diving is clearly making a run for the subscribers.
What I hope that this will mean is better editorial content in all of
the magazines, and maybe, just maybe a little compression of the whole
pack.  I'd like to see some of the smaller circulation magazines that
have been doing what they can to hold up their standards, like Scuba
Times and Discover Diving get compressed into the pack again.  At that
point, circulation, not advertorial content, will control which
magazine advertisers will pick (and at what rates) and maybe, just
maybe, we will see some scrambling for better editorial content instead
of advertising.

-- 
Nick Simicich - uunet!bywater!scifi!njs - njs@watson.ibm.com
SSI #AOWI 3958, HSA 318, NAUI #14065
Join the movement ---  turn 'to bush' into a verb.