General Category > General Discussion
Why are motorcycle print magazines going extinct?
faffi:
I love printed press. Not only because it is tangible, but it is so much nicer to read a magazine in bed than scroll on a pad. Easier on the eyes as well, and no temptation to look up something else. Currently, I read my old magazines over again, and they are like new because I forgot most what's in them. Also, I began losing interest in modern bikes around 1985, especially sportbikes, because something like an FZ750 or Gixxer 750 already delivered more performance than can be used on public roads, unless you take huge risks AND am a very good rider.
I kept my Cycle World subscription until November 2011, and shortly after I believe they stopped printing. Losing Cycle magazine was a pity, because while many of the modern bikes at the time was too complex for my taste, they had Kevin Cameron and his wonderful technical articles. They usually listed things like valve lift and cam duration, and tore down the majority of test bike's engines.
The closest thing to the old magazines I can find today, is Classic Bike. While it does indeed provide technical information, mostly written by Rick Parkington, their "test" rides usually do not go in details like I prefer. Then again, I am probably a dinosaur. My ideal magazine have a lot more text than pictures, but the trend have been the opposite for decades. Market probably are always right, or?
What are your opinions on this?
SIR REAL ED:
I would say lack of informative content, cost, competition from digital media, and lack of the ability of the reader to interact with the author of the motorcycle magazine article killed the printed magazine industry.
Look at much of the commentary on the internet via YouTube. Much of it is 30 minutes of video to convey 2 minutes (or less!!!) of useful information. The motorcycle magazine industry became similar. It prioritized entertainment over information. Perhaps it had no choice due to speed of disseminating information via other sources.
I gave up on motorcycle magazines about 15 years ago also, due to both lack of interest in "modern motorcycles" and the silliness of the authors trying to grab and hold eyeballs with useless hyperbole. "This motorcycle is more like Angelia Jolie while the other bike is more like Pamala Anderson..." type of nonsense.
Practical Sportbikes out of England held my interest longer than any other magazine, due to its focus on 70's and 80's era bikes.
I think the old adage holds true: "If you can tell good advice from bad advice, then you don't need advice!"
I suspect most of the readers on this forum know more than most of the "internet experts" who love to advise.
One of my favorite phrases is "I think the engineers who designed the bike know best, so you should not _________." IMO, this phrase is almost always typed by people who have no idea whatsoever what the priorities of the responsible engineers and designers were at the time of product development, and who are ignorant of any financial forces at work. In an ideal world, they would be correct, everything imaginable would have equal weighting.
michaell32:
I can't give any specific examples but I remember noticing several reviews were nothing but an advertisement disguised as a review. Some of them sounded like they read the spec sheet and that was the entire review. There's also the shift in my generation and the younger ones where less people ride and even less read.
Tusayan:
I think the issue in the English speaking world is people no longer buy print magazines, and the magazines can’t sell advertising with very low circulation. For reasons I don’t understand this not the case in e.g. Germany, so Motorrad lives on. Germans can be curiously old fashioned, and it’s a good thing in this case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorrad_(magazine)
faffi:
Practical Sportsbikes is no more, unfortunately.
There are still MOTORRAD, who owns what seems to be the majority of printed magazines in Europe. I used to like MOTORRAD when I was younger, and they still offer more facts and numbers than the others, but I prefer the way especially the American magazines were made in the 70s and 80s, and miss that sort of journalism.
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