How Can Magazines Expect To Get Paid for Digital Content When They Charge So Little For Print Content? - Steve Blacker - MediaBizBloggers

The majority of magazines continue to do a great job in undermining the value of their content by charging ridiculously low subscription prices. Granted, when advertising was more plentiful this business model worked. Here are just a few random examples of some sub offers that turn magazine brands into highly discounted commodities. 2-Year Sub Offers: ALLURE$10, Marie Claire $10, Metropolitan Home$11, Redbook $15, ELLE$15, Ladies' Home Journal$16.97, Good Housekeeping$19, SELF& free tote bag, $19.97 Family Circle$19.98. A FEW NOTABLE EXCEPTIONS - TWO YEAR SUB OFFERS: Architectural Digest$49.95, Real Simple$40.56, O The Oprah Magazine$36.

IMPROVE YOUR MARKETING TO HISPANICS! impreMedia is now the number one Hispanic News and Information Company in the U.S. in Online and Print. Digital Media veteran Liz Sarachek is the SVP of sales and is currently launching innovative cross platform programs for major advertisers and other media, entertainment and technology partners... You can reach her at liz.sarachek@impremedia.com.

If I see one more ad from CNN in The New York Timestelling me how many more viewers they deliver than FOX and MSNBC NEWS I'll get sick. My favorite is Morning Joeeven though it's sponsored by an overpriced coffee retailer. It's heads and shoulders above every other show regardless of what Nielsen Media Research may say.

MOREMagazine is probably one of the best edited magazines in the country. Kudos to Editor in Chief Lesley Jane Seymour. It's a great lifestyle magazine for affluent women 40+ (average household income $93,000+). That's a higher household income than by almost one third than that of Vogue, Allureor Bazaar.

VENTURE CAPITALISTS CONTINUE TO INVEST IN WEB SITE START UPS EVEN THOUGH MOST STILL REMAIN UNPROFITABLE. The newest is Fanbase, which is creating an almanac of every professional and college athlete no matter how obscure. It already contains information on 21,000 teams and 1.73 million athletes. It hopes to make money by attracting a large audience and then selling advertising. This sounds familiar, but it rarely seems to work.

Deborah Burns could burn up the ad page sales and create tons of new business for Architectural Digestif they ever hired her as Publisher. Burns has consistently increased share for Hachette's Luxury Group (Met Home& Elle Decor) with little or no support from Alain LeMarchand, Hachette's President. She is extremely well liked and highly regarded in the marketplace and knows how to create highly innovative multi-platform programs.

SEARCHING FOR TRENDS: Scout Labs tracks intangibles online and is a new sentiment analysis tool. It allows subscribers to monitor blogs, news articles, online forums and social networking sites for trends in opinions about products and services. It's akin to a canary in a coal mine. News-Sift from the Financial Timesalso tracks sentiments about business topics in the news, coupled with a special search engine that allows users to organize their queries by topic, organization, place, person and theme.

LONG LIVE FAST GROWING SMALL COMPANIES! Inc. Magazine's September issue carries 105.1 ad pages, double MONEYMagazine's 51.5 ad pages and over 40% more than Forbeswith 62.4 ad pages. Under President Bob La Pointe's leadership, Inc. has shown a major resurgence. It owns its market with long term brand extensions such as the Inc. 500, a yearly meeting that acknowledges the 500 fastest growing small companies in the U.S.

IS TV GUIDE MAGAZINE NOW CHOPPED LIVER?

In an advertising first, CBS will promote its TV fall lineup on a tiny screen embedded in the pages of one major magazine. Ten years ago that one magazine would have been TV Guide. Today it's ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY. How come? George Schweitzer, CBS Marketing Chief, has the answer: "It use to be easy to promote a show. Take out an ad in TV Guide's fall preview issue. Not anymore." Is there a future for a magazine whose main function was as a small listings guide that sat on top of your TV set when there were a handful of major channels? I don't think so. The other entertainment magazines do a much better job of covering the major TV celebrities and shows.

Will Dale Lang ever retire? The founder of MediaNetworks, Working Woman and a host of other profitable ventures just keeps racing along. Lang is a hot shot car racer in his spare time. His Remedies Magazine is chock full of ads that are targeted to people with specific ailments that drug companies want to target. It's basic database marketing linked to savvy custom publishing. He also publishes a sister publication distributed in drug stores. If I were the head of a major publishing company I would buy Dale many lunches to pick his brain. Better yet I would try to buy his company.

Glen Beck deserves no sponsors! His show tends to encourage right wing "crazies" to bear arms against Obama and all Democrats. I doubt that even Beck believes the crap he is pandering to his audience.

NO MORE CHURCH & STATE RULES FOR MONOCLE MAGAZINE! Monocle, a global magazine, accepts editorial content produced by advertisers and is proud of it. Tyler Brule, the founder of WallpaperMagazine and Editor in Chief of Monoclecalls his advertisers "patrons." The current issue carries a large insert on Singapore with a survey paid for by its government and several large advertisers. As he states: "Church and state is a very tired U.S. concept." Monocleis akin to an infomercial and is published ten times a year. It has a distribution of a 150,000 copies in 82 countries. The cover price is $10 with back issues costing $20. It is a lively and visually entertaining read.

Steve's new book You Can't Fall Off The Floor - The Insiders' Guide to Re-Inventing Yourself and Your Career chronicles his 50 year career working for over 25 different companies with 189 lessons learned and insider tips from Gayle King, Cathie Black, Chuck Townsend and 28 others; Blacker is still going strong today as a partner in Frankfurt & Blacker Solutions, LLC. His web site is blacker-reinventions.com and e-mail address is blackersolutions@aol.com

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