From: millerm@CS.ColoState.EDU (mark miller)
Subject: Re: Atari seen in Compuke! Magazine
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1992 00:39:59 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Colorado State University, Computer Science Department
Followup-To: millerm@cs.colostate.edu

Bob_BobR_Retelle@cup.portal.com writes:

>To add to the discussion of magazines with Mark Miller..
> 
>Unfortunately, what drives magazines is not the popularity of
>a computer's "market share", but the percentage of advertising
>they can sell to a particular computer's suppliers..
> 
>Subscriptions alone don't pay for a very large part of the
>expenses in running a magazine.. it's the advertising pages that
>make or break a publication..   and if an advertising manager
>calls up companys and is told "We no longer support the Atari
>platform, please pull our ad", then the editorial departments
>can hardly continue to print material for a platform which no
>longer pays the bills...
 
Okay, that makes sense.  I did not realize that before.  I thought
magazine subscriptions did in fact pay a large part of the bills.
What puzzles me though is that example I cited with TI.  I am not
exaggerating when I say Compute! supported the TI-99/4A for about TWO
YEARS after TI stopped making them!  I don't THINK there was a lot of
advertising supporting TI's either after TI discontinued it.  I don't
know, I could be wrong.  I haven't looked at those old issues in a
while.  After reading one of the other messages on here about Borland
stopping support for the Mac, I've gotten another impression of the
computer industry.  From what I've heard in the past, the Mac has
something like a 10% market share in the U.S.  It may have grown since
then.  I don't think it's dropped, because I heard that once they
brought their low-end computers down to around the $1000 range they
couldn't make enough of them for the demand.  Perhaps in the "old
days" the computer industry was more forgiving and sympathetic to
minority brands, and were willing to hold out for them because it
didn't cost them much to do so.  What I don't understand is how come
Compute! stopped covering the Mac?  I can understand why it stopped
covering the Amiga, if they consider popularity below a certain margin
(which is higher than it used to be), but why the hell did they drop
Mac support???  Isn't the Mac popular enough, even in products that
could be sold through Compute! in advertising, that it would warrant
devoting a part of the magazine to it?  Also, isn't the Mac popular
enough that there would be a demand for Borland's products?  Or was
there a competing product in the Mac market that was better?  Some
have said the same recently of WordPerfect.  The reason WordPerfect
had to stop supporting the Atari is not only because of lower
popularity over time of the computers, but because other word
processors had come out that competed with it, and Atari users
preferred them to WordPerfect.

To sum it up, it seemed to me Compute! had changed its priorities
and is no longer the kind of magazine it used to be, in the spirit
that it used to be.  I remember, they used to pride themselves
on the fact that they were one of the few magazines covering all
different kinds of computers, so no matter which one you owned you
could get something out of the magazine.  Today I don't think this is
really true.  They still have general articles I'm sure, but just
about everything else is PC-only.  I was suspicious that the reason
the priorities were changed was that management had been changed.  The
new management came in, decided they didn't like Compute's philosophy,
or didn't understand it, and decided to change it.  Unfortunately I
don't think they understood the spirit of the older magazine, much
less the philosophy.  I think they have turned it into a PC-only
magazine, rather than what it was intended to be, a magazine that most
computer users could enjoy and get something out of it.  Maybe they
made the right decision to make the change.  I just suspect that they
made some unnecessary changes, that it wouldn't have hurt them to keep
some things that they have elliminated, like support for the Mac.

One may wonder why I am advocating that Compute! support the Mac.  I
am not advocating it per se.  I am an Atari user.  It just strikes me
as very odd that Compute! doesn't at least support the Mac in addition
to the PC.  I think it was unnecessary to take Mac support out.
Either it was management, or else the readers decided it.  Maybe Mac
users didn't like Compute! in the first place.  I just find the
lacking support odd, because it has not happened before.

>(I've actually sat with the "advertising manager" of an Atari
>specific publication and heard those same kinds of comments from
>her advertisers..  It's a pretty discouraging experience..)
 
Yeah, must be depressing.

>It might be that after having so many other platforms pulled out
>from under them (Radio Shack, Texas Instruments, ADAM, Sinclair,
>etc..) when the Atari 8bit market started to collapse, the
>publishers of Compute! decided not to wait until the bitter end
>to drop their coverage..  the Atari market had hung on by its
>fingernails much longer than any of those others..
 
Well it would seem they dropped support for the ST a little earlier
than "usual" also.  I think they dropped the ST mag. a year or two
after they dropped Atari 8-bit support.  One of the things that
might've been an indication of lack of support for some of the
other computers, as well as type-in programs in general is some of
their computer-specific publications went bi-monthly almost from the
beginning.

>Like any other businessman, a publisher has to go where his
>customers are, and give them what they want to buy, if he wants
>to stay in business.  Just call the rolls of all the now
>defunct Atari publications to see how true that is...

I couldn't agree with you more.  One of the other things that Compute!
used to pride itself on is it acted as kind of a bridge between
computer users.  Remember, I said one of the reasons I liked Compute!
was because it showed me the strengths and weaknesses of each make of
computer.  I remember Arlan Levitan writing a sarcastic column about
other magazines always supporting the make of computer they were
supporting and downgrading all other makes like they were the scum of
the earth, or making fun of them.  He also wrote about how silly it was
that computer users of one make were downgrading other makes of
computer.  He then went on to say, basically, "Alright!  Just
to show how stupid it is, I'm going to downgrade every make of
computer there is!!" and proceeded to do so, focusing only on the
weaknesses of each brand/type.  The point he was making, and some
other columnists of Compute! had made in the past is Compute! was
a magazine where this kind of stuff didn't happen, where all brands of
computer were considered equal in merit based on what they could do,
rather than what other computers couldn't do.

What I see happening with Compute! becoming another PC-only magazine
is that bridge is lost.  It would seem the computer industry has gone
back to the days where there were no general computer magazines, just
computer-specific ones, and each segment of computer users (using
their brand) were naive about what was going on with other brands,
because computer-specific publications don't cover other brands, or if
they do they cover them in a negative way.  The only general computer
magazines that I can think of now are Byte and Computer Shopper.  I
consider Byte to be a business-person's magazine, not a personal
computer user's mag.  Maybe Computer Shopper is the only one left in
this area?

|Mark Miller, computer science   |"The most important human endeavor is the  |
|major at C.S.U.                 |striving for morality in our actions.  Our |
|millerm@cs.colostate.edu        |inner balance and even our very existence  |
|mmiller@nyx.cs.du.edu           |depend on it.  Only morality in our        |
|   /    Atari friend! |||       |actions can give beauty and dignity to     |
| \/ --- The Mark      )|(       |life." --- Albert Einstein                 |
|        World Peace  / | \  There's nothing else quite like it.             |

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