Australian PC magazines in decline

Brad Howarth (who is our guest on The Productivity Show tonight, talking about IM etiquette), has this interesting story about the decline in Aussie PC magazines:

Interesting to read during the week that sales of Australian PC magazines are having trouble holding on to their readerships. Interesting also to hear that several editors believe that the decline is due to the general state of the economy. I'm not really sure how this can be - consumer confidence and spending is still high, the employment market is great, and the economy is growing. Things have certainly been a lot worse than they are now.

Perhaps there could be another factor at play. The ongoing rise of web-based information sources, particularly blogs and podcasts such as Engadget and This Week in Tech, are providing plenty of alternative sources of information for consumers. The emergence of new media forms is especially troubling for technology publications, as their readers tend to be those who are themselves the most tech-savvy, and also the early adopters of new media forms. If any group within publishing is going to be hit first by a transference of readers (and then advertisers) to new media forms, it will be the technology trade press publications.

This is more interesting because Brad is a tech journalist.

Obviously technology-related publications are going to be the first to feel the heat from new media as the geeks are the early adopters. Will this trend of declining sales hit other publications as well as new media becomes more mainstream? I think it has too. We're entering the era of choice in our media. Imagine someone who has been living on Ritz crackers all their life suddenly sitting down to a great banquet spread over a dozen tables. Succulent roast meats, piles of fresh fruit, sweets to make your mouth water, a  veritable cornucopia of delights.

That's what your media experience is going to be like in the next five years.

Comments

[Duncan Riley]

I'd like to know what happened to the Internet.au magazine. I bought there first issue back in Feb 96 (for memory, may have been earlier) and was an avid reader for years. Indeed one of my earlier sites was even featured in the reader sites section in like October 96.

I never subscribed but I bought it religously for years. About 2 years ago they started to lose the plot and kept changing editors. About 9 months ago they did a big revamp and I read it once or twice and stopped after that, it became shite. I've never seen it in any newsagents in my neck of the woods since. It's totally gone. I've presumed it's died, but I never knew for sure, if any one knows what happened to it let me know :-)

As for the rest of them, I've noticed that the whole PC mag space in the local newsagents has continued to decline. You've got a handful of Australian titles and then you get 66% imports, but they take up a whole lot smaller section than they did say 3 or 4 years ago (I can still remember buying Australian Amstrad User back in the 80's!). I'd think Brad is right. I've bought some local titles recently and the stories they list are all 2-3 months old by the time you read them. The only real benefit they provide is the disks attached to the cover, so I don't have to download some of the software. Aside from this though they don't really provide all that much value, particularly when 60% of the printed content is ads.

[Duncan Riley]

In fact I should edit that comment, it could have been 12-18 months ago since I last read Internet.au. It was, for many years, the only mag I bought every month without fail, I'd look for each new edition when ever I visited a newsagent. And yet it seems to be now gone. Sad really.

[Justin King]

Considering I used to buy at least 3 of the major magazines each month and now I'd be lucky to buy 1.

Many reasons and I'll list them in order.

a) price - $8.95 for a mag with 50% ads you've got to be sh$ting me
b) online content, just about all information is found online one month earlier
c) topics, I know this is the bread and butter of the mags to have a feature but if it's
not something that interests me i.e feature on laptops when I just bought one is not going
to get a sale
d) RRP, that's all the magazines focus on, not here is where you can get the best deal and give pricing from 3 or 4 places saying average price. If I wanted to pay retail I'd buy an IPOD or shop at David Jones.

[Cameron Reilly]

So what about WIRED? Does it continue to hold anyone's attention? I used to buy it religiously, but now I only pick it up once in a blue moon. I know Rich Giles still subscribes, but does anyone else? And if so, why?

[Tony]

I was like you Duncan with Internet.au and I bought the first issue and every one after also. It just then didn't appear one month and after waiting I assumed it died. I used to pick up PC User, PC Powerplay as well but I really don't whay I had read most of the stuff online already and the product reviews could also be found elsewhere.

I also think tech magazines are most likely to be the first too suffer. Since moving to Mac I dio pick up a few Mac magazines but that's mostly because I am still learning about the Mac and like to help improve knowledge a bit more. I have seen a big increase in not just international magazines but also Linux magazines over the last year or so. A lot of these are international as well but they must sell or I couldn't imagine the newsagent stocking them.

People using Linux are usually geekier than most normal PC users I would have thoought and be less likely than most to buy magazines.

[Deepak]

Rupert Murdoch recently said that "Newspapers will change, not die". I guess the same goes for magazines.

[Duncan Strong]

Perhaps the problem is the appalling lack of quality, original content.

This is made worse by the high price charged for the mags, plus the enormous volume of "catalog"-style advertising in these magazines.

I find that when I do buy a mag, its more often than not from overseas (ie. Linux Format, Go:Play), as although pricey, at least the content is original and up-to-date. If I'm going to pay $8.95, I'd rather just double-down and spend $18.95 to get something cutting edge.

[Rob Irwin]

For all the Internet.au fans in this comments section, yes, the magazine died. Early December, 2004 as I recall.

Interesting that if you were all so passionate abou tit, you never pulled up a back issue and called the publisher to ask, however...!