Why are motorcycle print magazines going extinct?

[Antietam Classic Cycle]

I still receive American Motorcyclist (comes with my AMA membership) and hand me down copies of Motorcycle Classics. Both enjoyable when I have time to read them. I can count on one hand the number of modern motorcycles that I find interesting, so don't really miss the mainstream motorcycle mags. Same with cars and automotive magazines. 

[redhawk47]

I also am a AMA member and enjoy their “American Motorcyclist” magazine. They have articles about any and all things motorcycle!
But the most important reason to support the AMA is their interface with government, keeping an eye and ear on rules and regulations that are new or changed.
Every person who rides a motorcycle should be a member of American Motorcyclist Association because they work to defend our rights to ride!

[faffi]

While l understand the obvious about internet being the cause, l find it strange that so many find it to be a substitute and not just an addition to print.

[SIR REAL ED]

While l understand the obvious about internet being the cause, l find it strange that so many find it to be a substitute and not just an addition to print.

IMO, most of the motorcycle magazines that were published in the US became almost useless in terms of content, about 20 years ago.  The wonderful technical analysis articles and in depth motorcycle tests of the 1970's and 1980's ceased to exist by the early 2000's.  For excellent examples of what used to be, read the 1978 series of Cycle magazines.  It was a watershed year for superbikes, and the analysis of the flagship bikes of the big four was very informative.

The original tests of the Kawasaki Z1R, Yamaha XS1100, Suzuki GS1000, and especially the Honda CBX by Cycle magazine are a great reads.  Read those four articles and one can intelligently discuss the differences between the bikes.

IMO, content was replaced by flowery prose.  I recall lines like "This motorcycle is more like Pamela Anderson, while it's competitors are like Angelina Jolee."  Motorcycle Consumer News was the last of the informative magazines.  After Dave Searle stepped down as editor, his replacement followed the flowery prose format.

I suspect a lot of the reason for the decline of the magazine industry was also generational.  The gearhead generations were seceded by the electronic generations.  The yutes had no desire to know or understand the difference between chain drive, belt drive, or shaft drive or even the difference between a two stoke and a four stoke.  I suspect that today if you asked a lot of young motorcyclists "What is the difference between a "2T" and "4T" motorcycle?" they could not tell you.

For many young people in the US, getting your hands dirty is a mark of a lower class person.  That is something they were programmed by their parents to not become.

I saw this first hand with a relative.  While holding his six week old son in his arms, Dad said "I don't ever want my son to get his hands dirty earning a living."  I suspect both his sons (now in their 30's) could not tell you the difference between channel lox and side cutters, and they have not spent $100 total on tools in their lifetimes!

But I am sure they are both knowledgeable Accountants.

I know a 25 year old male (I refuse to say man) who called up his mother when he got a flat tire on this car.

But it is also possible they have never even seen a rotary phone, a pay phone, a clutch pedal, a non digital clock, or a map.

[faffi]

Fully agree, Sir. Also that Cycle was at the peak of M/C publications. I am currently reading through the old editions and currently near the end of 1984, going backwards to at least 76. Personally, I began losing interest in new motorcycles - sportbikes at first - with the VF750F Interceptor, which I considered to be too good for road riding and too complex. Of course, you could argue that there is no such thing as a bike being too good, but since I (used to) enjoy using the full* potential of my motorcycles, having a bike that is too good takes away some of the fun for me.

But back to magazines. I think there still is room for hard copies you can grab and read at your own pace, without popups or noise or moving images. Just picked up a copy of Classic Bike and Classic Motorcycle Mechanics - I like to read M/C magazines when I go to bed for the night. They are not nearly as good as Cycle, but they are still good enough to be worth reading.


*I am not a stellar rider, meaning any racer can ride any motorcycle faster than me, regardless of the bike's limits. But I still enjoy throwing sparks around corners.

[SIR REAL ED]

The other factor, and this may be generational as much as anything, read 5 or 6 high quality motorcycle magazines a month for 10-20 years, and combine that with your own personal riding experience, and at that point, you just might be much more knowledgeable that most motorcycle magazine writers.  Especially in recent years, where the writers often wrote like employees rather than experienced motorcyclists.

Another excellent example of an old time article is when Cycle Guide modified a Harley Sportster into a UJM.  I think it was called Route 66.  Or when Cycle Guide did a comparison of the two Kawasaki 1000's (chain and shaft drive) and the two Suzuki 1000's (chain and shaft drive).

The internet killed magazines as sources of information (which is what I wanted in my earlier years), but for simple reading pleasure, the magazines of the seventies were and still are hard to beat. 

[TN Mark]

While l understand the obvious about internet being the cause, l find it strange that so many find it to be a substitute and not just an addition to print.

You can watch a video in real time or within days of the bike being tested or an event, for free. Very few people then will also purchase the magazine and then read about it weeks or even a month or more later. The exception would be the person who actually purchased the bike. There were plenty of YouTube videos covering the recent 105th Moto Guzzi Anniversary. Some of the ones posting YouTube videos then also write about it in a magazine. They've already provided their own video of the event within hours of it taking place.

US magazines seem to have half the pages they once had, twice the advertising space on the pages they have and are priced twice the cost of years past. Yea, no thank you, no thank you very much. It's been years since I subscribed to magazines. With YouTube or other sources, you get todays information efficiently and effectively. Magazines, like newspapers, contain mostly 'old news'.

US magazine and newspaper circulation is miniscule compared to a decade ago. It's not an information medium that will make a comeback anymore than the cassette tape, a CD or a DVD will.

[theoneandonlymin]

So it used to be said that none ever threw National Geographical magazine away and the entire weight had sunk the USA into the ground by an inch.

On those grounds most of us have a stash of motorcycle mags.
Maybe dig into them and reread the good stuff, Jennings Cameron, Gary Inman etc
Tear them out bin the rest.
Before I binned my Bike mag collection, I removed Ogri and anything Guzzi related.

[TN Mark]

Road & Track magazine used to have a writer named Satch Carlson. Loved reading everything he wrote.
But, that was several decades ago.

[Tom]

As mentioned above, one of the You Tube channels replacing print magazines.  Yammie Noob.  Wait for it.      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAQeYxEk3LA

[Tusayan]

I’m in Germany right now and it’s interesting to see that print magazines are far from dead here.  Also, the newspaper has an active classified section with lots of vehicles and printed photo adverts.  And the little town where we are has a weekly printed newsletter distributed widely.  It’s a different world.

[faffi]

Haven't watched a video by yammie noob in many years, but what little I saw gave me no desire to watch more. For bike testes, I have watched MOTORRAD and 1000PS, but I have lost virtually all interest in current bikes.

[MikeP996]

Yammie noob is interesting and I enjoy some of his videos but since I have far longer experience riding motorcycles, if he offers options that I disagree with, my opinion is more valid to me... ;)

[SIR REAL ED]

Haven't watched a video by yammie noob in many years, but what little I saw gave me no desire to watch more. For bike testes, I have watched MOTORRAD and 1000PS, but I have lost virtually all interest in current bikes.

Yep!  At least 50% of all the internet opinion videos are entertainment focused, with very little useful comment.  Often less than 1 minute of information is buried inside 20 minutes of self aggrandizement.

IMO, the same happened in the final years of many motorcycle magazines.

[Antietam Classic Cycle]

...bike testes...

Motorcycles have testes? Who knew! 

[2dogs]

Sounds like bollocks to me

[faffi]

 

[theoneandonlymin]

I knew that I had this link to Kevin Cameron articles somewhere....

https://muckrack.com/kevin-cameron/articles

[faffi]

Thank you for sharing

[nadab_sardar]

Pretty much agree with the consensus here, but I'd add one thing that doesn't get mentioned much: the economics changed before the reading habits did. Once ad budgets moved online, a magazine that sold 60k copies suddenly couldn't cover print and postage on the rates it could charge, and the cheapest fix was cutting pages, which made the mag thinner and less worth buying. That's the death spiral Ed and SLDMRossi were describing.

I think the thing you miss, Faffi, the long technical pieces with real numbers, is also what the online crowd is least willing to pay for. A 4,000-word teardown doesn't get clicks the way a 90-second video of a bike rolling out of a dealer does, so the market quietly stopped funding it. Kevin Cameron's stuff is probably the hardest thing to replace, because almost nobody else is both that technical and that readable.

[blu guzz]

In one of my other hobby mags, the editor once said that the ratio of ads to copy was one page of ad supported one page of copy. These 2 mags survive as mail to you paper and the ratio is as he said.  In 2009, both mags were a good deal slimmer but held on.  In case anyone but me cars, they are stereo mags.

[faffi]

Pretty much agree with the consensus here, but I'd add one thing that doesn't get mentioned much: the economics changed before the reading habits did. Once ad budgets moved online, a magazine that sold 60k copies suddenly couldn't cover print and postage on the rates it could charge, and the cheapest fix was cutting pages, which made the mag thinner and less worth buying. That's the death spiral Ed and SLDMRossi were describing.

I think the thing you miss, Faffi, the long technical pieces with real numbers, is also what the online crowd is least willing to pay for. A 4,000-word teardown doesn't get clicks the way a 90-second video of a bike rolling out of a dealer does, so the market quietly stopped funding it. Kevin Cameron's stuff is probably the hardest thing to replace, because almost nobody else is both that technical and that readable.

I think you are spot on. It is enough evidence to see how few that watched the show put on by Mark Hoyer and Kevin Cameron to understand that the majority of people to day does not want to be educated, they want to be entertained in a way that does not require the brain to be engaged.

[SIR REAL ED]

I think you are spot on. It is enough evidence to see how few that watched the show put on by Mark Hoyer and Kevin Cameron to understand that the majority of people to day does not want to be educated, they want to be entertained in a way that does not require the brain to be engaged.

I have a friend who posts videos on social media.  They are very short videos.  I asked him why, and his answer was "According to some research I did, the optimal length for a video to gain the most views is 11.5 seconds."

My wife has read several articles about how the simple physical act of taking notes by writing cursive or printing, activates the brain very differently than typing and results in better learning.  Makes perfect sense.  More engagement means better retention.

It is a different world out there now, and humans brains have been formatted very differently in the last 20 years or so.  The Generation Gap has always been real, perhaps now it is bigger than before.

I suspect that the programs that allow one to dictate rather than type result in even less brain engagement than typing.

Remember how much more thinking we used to do before choosing a word or a sentence, when the correction process was either difficult or impossible?

[TN Mark]

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?

When you wrote your four favorite motorcycle magazines and asked them your question: what was their response?

[faffi]

I didn't, and did not have to - it's always about money. And my point was not to be critical towards the publishers, it was more a question as to why we stopped reading print. Here is one elaborate take on this https://weareallcreatives.substack.com/p/why-we-fell-out-of-love-with-magazines

[TN Mark]

The magazines take (‘spin’) on the topic would likely be interesting.

[Tom]

Creative Careers
Why we fell out of love with magazines.      Thanks, Faffi.  I put a quote from the article.

"The internet changed everything.

Content was suddenly everywhere; it was easy to access without even leaving your house and the choice for the reader seemed infinite; there was something for every taste and mood.

Suddenly anyone could be a journalist - all they needed to do was send their blogs out into the world."

[Rons]

Creative Careers
Why we fell out of love with magazines.      Thanks, Faffi.  I put a quote from the article.

"The internet changed everything.

Content was suddenly everywhere; it was easy to access without even leaving your house and the choice for the reader seemed infinite; there was something for every taste and mood.

Suddenly anyone could be a journalist - all they needed to do was send their blogs out into the world."

Any 10 YT “influencers” are not worth one Peter Egan column. The quality of these video motorcycle reviews is terrible. Most of them are GoPro video of the “reviewer” riding the bike.  Stream of consciousness pablum.