Mopar Muscle magazine going away?

[Kern Dog]

I just read a thread on Moparts that Randy Bolig had been laid off along with several others associated with the magazine. Apparantly several other magazines are on the chopping block too.
Terrible.

[draftingmonkey]

Used to subscribe but the cost just kept going up. Finally had to drop it with all the others in order to save money due to the economy. To bad as they usually had some decent write-ups, pics and info

[TUFCAT]

I won't miss that rag...

[bill440rt]

Thanks for posting. My subscription just came to a halt! 

[Indygenerallee]

It's been a long time since I have picked up any magazine...

[TheAutoArchaeologist]

Mopar Muscle is sticking around, but they closed their Tampa facility and Randy did get cut.  Johnny Hunkins is taking over MM.

[Daytona R/T SE]

It's been a long time since I have picked up any magazine...

What do you read in the shitter ? 

[MaximRecoil]

I always liked Mopar Action a lot better; Richard Ehrenberg is not just a knowledgeable Mopar guy, but he's a very entertaining writer as well. Some of the MA articles had me laughing to tears, like Say 'Bye to Neon and Dr. E-Berg's Weight Loss Diet.

Mopar Muscle is a very dry read in comparison. However, I haven't read much of any magazines since first getting a PC and internet access in 2001.

[thedodgeboys]

However, I haven't read much of any magazines since first getting a PC and internet access in 2001.

And that is why most magazines cant compete in the digital age..

When was the last time you read a newspaper?

[Indygenerallee]

What do you read in the shitter ?  shruggy

browse the internet on my "smartphone" 

[polywideblock]

I hope not ,resigned for another 3years last year      

  unlike you guys unless I go to a mopar specific  show chances of seeing anything  "mopar "  around the traps is almost non existant      need the rags for my mopar fix

[tan top]

use to subscribe to the three , mopar muscle , mopar action & hp mopar   from when  they first came out  ,  mopar muscle use to be good till ten twelve years ago , then had too much late model stuff , ( no offence ) & seemed to be all A bodies  E bodies , no offence all awesome cars but wanted to see chargers on every page     then the same cars would do the rounds all the magazines ,  stopped mopar muscle about 5 six years ago I think & mopar action at the same time , Mopar action was the better magazine  towards the end  , imo  in the 90s they both were awesome bathroom reading material a long with HP mopar !!  

been thinking about getting mopar action again  

with internet there is no real need for magazines , IMO before internet & dodge charger dot com  moparts etc I would wait for the mail man every month   for my fix of mopar    

[Cooter]

I wondered why that uber high dollar, built as a tech article so as to get the mag to cover costs, 1970 SB was up on evilbay.

Asked Randy five years in a row at Carlisle, to just come over and look at our 'Christine' set up. Nothing.
asked ONE time to Mopar Action and got in the mag. Randy can kiss my lily white ass.

[Ghoste]

I rarely pick up MM anymore.  More than half the pages are ads, the tech articles too frequently just read like infomercials for those same advertisers and I'm already so bored with the restomods they adore not to mention the several pages spent every issue on their annual engine shootout.

[myk]

It's been a long time since I have picked up any magazine...

What do you read in the shitter ? 

Playboy or Harry Potter...

[timmycharger]

Dont know why, still like pawing through a car magazine, some old habits never go away, I used to like MM more a few years back, but if I do pick one up, its usually Mopar Action, Rick is indeed, very entertaining along with informative. 

[6spd68]

I think the internet is slowly killing magazines.  Can't say that's a bad thing to be honest. 

[Daytona R/T SE]

What do you read in the shitter ?  
[/quote]

Playboy or Harry Potter...
[/quote]









Wait...


Hairy ...WHAT ?

[wingcar]

I really hope Mopar Muscle isn't going away as I worked the "Chrysler Power" booth/trailer at the Mopars at the Strip show this past March....and we were selling MM subscriptions in addition to subscriptions to "Chrysler Power" magazine.  I personally sold quite a few just on Friday alone.  I met one of their management team at the show, and he didn't appear to be too worried about his job.  It looks as if they are just trying to become leaner in a very competitive market.   

[Ghoste]

Can they get much leaner?

[66FBCharger]

The best thing about MM is the free t shirt you get when you renew at Carlisle or The Nats.
I think I am going to let my subscription expire. The magazine is getting thinner and the articles read like an advertisement.
I'll miss having the free t shirt to use as a work shirt.

[Aero426]

I think the internet is slowly killing magazines.  Can't say that's a bad thing to be honest. 

I thought so too.   But according to the people in the trade, it is not the internet so much as a lack of BIG dollar advertisers.     I'll find the article and link it.   

[Aero426]

Some insight:

Shared from Richard Truesdell.

An Essay on the Current State of the Automotive Publishing Industry

This is a more formal view, from 38,000 feet – like my good friend Bill Basore likes to say – of what I wrote earlier about what happened earlier today at Automobile.

The magazine business is changing and what happened at Automobile is all about one thing; declining ad revenue. Competition from the web comes in a very distant second.

Go back to late 2007 and look at any of the Big Four (Car and Driver, Motor Trend, Road and Track and Automobile) car magazines titles and what would you have seen? Dozens of pages of high-priced, full-rate-card OEM new car advertising.

What was one of the first casualties of the 2008 economic meltdown and the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler? The answer, OEM new-car advertising. What was OEM new-car advertising replaced with? Pages and pages of off-rate-card, low-priced advertising from the likes of WeatherTech floor mats and retailers like Tire Rack and Discount Tire. Do you honestly think they're paying the same page rate that GM, Ford, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Chrysler and others once did?

Then there's the revenue carnage in single-copy sales numbers. First are abysmal sell-through rates. Do you know that more than seven out of every 10 copies of magazines placed on news stands – both in places like your local supermarket or Barnes and Noble – ends up in a landfill? Magazine distribution is by its very nature, hugely inefficient.

Then compound this with a dramatic loss of news stand space. Back in 2009, with its "Project Impact" program, Walmart drastically cut back on the titles it carried and this had a devastating effect, not just on small, niche titles, but larger ones as well and contributed to the demise of mainstream titles Gourmet, which when it died, had over 1,000,000 paid circulation, mostly low-paying, subsidized subscribers. But that wasn't enough to overcome the cost of huge head counts on overblown mastheads combined with high production, printing and mailing costs.

Following this, publishers faced the loss of 700 Borders outlets all while your local supermarket was cutting back shelf space dedicated to magazines. In my local Stater Brothers supermarket, magazines went from a prominent spot near the shopping carts to half the space in a retail Siberia next to $3 extension cords.

And let us not forget subscriptions (see Gourmet above) where more than 80% of paid circulation lies for most magazines. In an effort to deliver eyeballs to advertisers, publishers have been forced to heavily subsidize subscriptions for less than to cost to either print or mail the magazine. We've all seen under $5 subscriptions for many titles, including the Big Four. Through website like freebizmag.com I get Travel + Leisure and many automotive print titles for free. Outlets like freebizmag.com are there for one sole purpose, to prop up circulation numbers. I get a new solicitation each day and unless it's a title I really want, I simply ignore it.

Traditional magazines are, as we now see, in a near-death spiral. Revenue is under siege on all fronts, costs are rising, circulation and revenue declining. While many readers are content to get free enthusiast content on/from the Internet, delivered to their digital devices like phones and tablets, many still want to hold a well-produced, properly-edited, ink-on-paper magazine in their hands. That's why was said by Rod Nelson in my earlier post rings true.

"I still prefer to actually hold the magazine in my hands and experience much more than looking at a screen on-line"

This is why I've chosen to put so much effort into self-published, print-on-demand magazines, my own Automotive Traveler Classic Car (ATCC) and Legendary Cougar Magazine (LCM) that I produce with my good friend Bill Basore. In the case of ATCC, I still believe that there's a place for a magazine with the production values of Octane, but a more American-car focus like Motor Trend Classic. With the second issue, with a full roster of contributors (rather than me writing everything) I won't need to sell tens of thousands of copies to be successful. Believe it or not, just 1,000 paying subscribers will make it viable and allow me to produce exactly the kind of classic car magazine I've always dreamed of. I feel that there are enough like-minded 50-75 year old car enthusiast to make it work. I'm not going to try to publish wide, I'm going to publish narrow, to a very defined target audience.

And in the case of LCM, Bill was able to tap into a starved, underserved market, (classic Cougar owners and enthusiasts) to sell enough subscriptions to make a print-on-demand publication viable even before issue one went to the printer. His success has surprised even me, who is the eternal optimist about self-publishing. This is the future of publishing, what I call micropublishing. And it's really exciting, to be writing and publishing directly to readers, eliminating much of what is superfluous to producing great magazines.

As I'm writing this, the s**t hit the fan on two fronts. First is the inevitable consolidation of Source Interlink Media titles, as reported by in the last hour by Jalopnik, which I've said has been coming for a long time.

Popular Hot Rodding folds into Hot Rod.
Rod & Custom folds into Street Rodder.
High Performance Pontiac folds into Hot Rod.
Custom Classic Trucks folds into Classic Trucks.
4 Wheel Drive & SUV folds into Four Wheeler.
Mud Life folds into Four Wheeler.
5.0 Mustang folds into Muscle Mustangs & Fast Fords.
Modified Mustangs & Fords folds into Mustang Monthly.
Camaro Performers folds into Super Chevy.
GM Hi-Tech folds into Super Chevy.
Import Tuner folds into Super Street.
Honda Tuning folds into Super Street

This impacts me personally as I had a story published in the current issue of Mustang Monthly (MM) and have features in preparation for MM and High Performance Pontiac. All now fall into a publishing no-man's land.

But what also has happened is that Source Interlink Media (SIM) sister company, Source Interlink Distribution (SID), the company that distributes magazines to retailers, has folded. Apparently it was unable to pay its bills to Time for magazines it sold to retailers. Yesterday Time announced that it was ending its distribution agreement with SID. While the two events, SID ceasing operations and the consolidation of titles at SIM are unrelated, the timing says otherwise.

Jalopnik has published a link to the new TEN (The Enthusiast Network) organizational chart and combined with all the January cutbacks. It's obvious to me that what was once the dominant Petersen Publishing Company, that was bought by eMap, then swallowed by Primedia that was taken over by Source Interlink, is a radically different company from what it was just six months ago. And I believe that more changes are coming.

Below is a link to the new/current TEN orgainization chart.

More information and comments welcomed, especially from those directly impacted by all the editorial movements. I do feel your pain having been on the receiving end of similar purges in the past. Please feel free to share this essay.

[wingcar]

Thank you Aero 426...very enlighting insight...

I remember back a few years when I renewed my subscription to "Mopar Enthusiast" only to have them consolidate it and other titles into one magazine a short time later.  This basically meant that I was then receiving a magazine with content that was 75% of non-interest to me.  I wrote to the editor and to no surprise he never responded.  Long story short, I didn't renew when my subscription ended and I never purchased the new magazine from the newsstand. 
I personally am of the old school that enjoys being able to take a magazine to my easy chair, or the garage, or whatever...plus I share at a computer screen all day at work, so the last thing I want to do is sit in front of one at home!
I write for various magazines both automotive and Aviation related.  I started writing seriously only just a few years back and need to give thanks to Roland and his determination to "restart" Chrysler Power Magazine.  He has given me guidance and I really appreciate his taking the time to mentor a new writer. His magazine was the original and only Mopar Magazine for years, until others jump on the band wagon.   It's a challenging time for even the established names on the newsstand....so for him to jump back into the game, and be successful is really saying something. 

[TUFCAT]

Thanks for that input guys.     My question is why bother with the newsstands at all?  It seems like a big waste of money to put your product on a shelf hoping for a "what-if" or "if-come" purchasing scenario.

To me the smart money seems to be in subscriptions, where you know your market volume and demographics up front.  Its much easier to attract an audience you already have, than to attract a new one.

Couldn't some of the mags that folded went to "subscription only" first?  That might have saved as much money as folding the title into something else...just guessing?

[tan top]

interesting  , thanks for posting 

[Moparman01]

I absolutely do not want to see print magazines go away!! I just can not get into staring at my smart phone trying to scroll thru an internet article, it's pain. I do subscribe to all the Mopar magazines, MM, CP, MA, and yes i'll get some flack for this but Mopar Collectors Guide is my favorite Mopar rag! For $25 or so i get a year of good reading from all the rags and 4 or 5 new T-shirts for car show season, it's a win win! I run some long cycle time machines in the machine shop i work for, plus i'm graveyard shift to boot, i love pulling out my Mopar mags and soaking in as much info as possible while my machines are running. It sucks Randy has been let go from Mopar Muscle, i mean i don't know the guy personally or anything but i like reading his column and most of the tech stuff. Wonder where he'll end up?

[fy469rtse]

I'm with poly wide block , need my fix of mopar and the so called latest, us Australians are very remote and a minority at general shows ,
Saying this , one of my new favourite mags , is muscle car review ,

[Challenger426]

Thought Randy was pretty cool, He printed my story a couple years back. Hopefully all this is for the best. I'd like to see this mag still grow. It Has So Much Potential. I have three new car stories for this future year I'm sending in to The how to get your car in the Mag, campaign. I think they are going in the right direction with this. I hope this will bring in lots of new cars for them to pick from and hopefully better interesting stories. I use to run a magazine the secret to getting subscribers is to bring the stories to get the recognition, just stuffing more into the mag so it looks like less advertising would help. They should rotate Classic Restos, Resto Mods, Late Models even Survivors and Ram Trucks. Really it has been what they have been doing. You gotta try to please everyone  .

[polywideblock]

don't forget the under 30 demographic  and a shedload of modified cars      

                                                                                                           http://www.dodgecharger.com/forum/index.php/topic,113126.0.html

[500Jon]

Good thread this!

We probably have a bigger problem in the UK.
We have several Americar based magazines but very little tech.
There is only so many cars here and even going to the Shows and seeing the same cars again and again gets tiring.
Ultimately they are too expensive at nearly £5 ($7.50).
We can all go on line, get up to date info, find cars and parts to buy and sell, for pennies!!!

I bought my Plymouth Gtx out of a UK mag Classic American in 1998.
Is was a good mag back then, but recently they did a 4 page article on a rolling wreck 67 Coronet!
The back up story was total spoof, tongue in cheek nonsense, I'm not paying good money for such drivel.
I used to love a trip to LA and pick up mags at big magstands, but even they have stopped selling car mags.
I'm afraid their days are numbered, I just got fed up driving round, trying to find a good mag seller.

[TUFCAT]

Even a good porn mag is getting hard to find.

[JB400]

The problem around here in my area is the convenience stores quit carrying magazines about 12 years ago.  As a treat, I used to walk up to the convenience store and get a coke a buy a magazine.  Not no more.

[jaak]

I subscribed to MM for years, pretty much from my late teens until my early 30s. Thing with me is I love tech articles, and back before I got internet, I loved reading all the ads, seeing what different vendors had to offer, then getting catalogs from several vendors. It seems like with tech articles.. they went on a cycle, in other words after a while it would be done again on a different car, engine, etc. Really I could care less about the featured cars in the mag, I would read the featured articles, but that wasn't what I bought the mag for, it was all about tech and ads with me.

Now with the internet, you have 24/7 access to all the tech, vendors you'll ever need.

Jason

[Charger4404spd]

I quit gettings mags several years ago.... just got tired of paying for all the ads.

[hemi-hampton]

I like buying the Mags at the stores, but at $7.00+ bucks each next thing I know I buy 4 Mags & it's like $30 bucks. LEON.

[TruckDriver]

I like buying the Mags at the stores, but at $7.00+ bucks each next thing I know I buy 4 Mags & it's like $30 bucks. LEON.

That is why I stopped buying magazines for the most part. Once in a great while, like if one of our members has a decent sized spread, I'll buy a issue it's in.

[Challenger426]

I pay $43 dollars every 3 years for 36 issues and they deliver the MM mag to my door. Its pretty exciting getting the issues in the mail each month. Only thing they are like 4 months ahead of the actual date. Like I have my March 2015 issue in January 2015. and an artical in the Mag refers to the September dates but I got that Mag in december and the Event took place in September and It was missed by everyone buy the MM editors I'm sure. They Need to Fix the Monthly issue to the home delivery thing. My next issue in February will be the April 2015 Edition very wacked. They should try to fix their timeline problem.

[fc7_plumcrazy]

I think MCG is still the best mag out there

Carsten

[chargervic]

For those that haven't noticed, Randy Bolig is now the tech editor for Mopar Collectors Guide. They will starting up some tech stuff in the near future. Glad he's still in the business, he's a real Mopar guy.

[Ghoste]

Tech sensationalism?  Hmmm.

[TUFCAT]

Tech sensationalism?  Hmmm.

Exactly.....you could even go so far as to call it "Tech Fiction". 

[Ghoste]

Still my favorite Mopar magazine but I know what I'm getting.

[Kern Dog]

Has anyone heard from Randy? I lost track of him.

[TheAutoArchaeologist]

He still goes to Carlisle, or did last year.  But he's involved in a few other magazines not Mopar related.

[Mike DC]

 
IMO the Mopar hobby could probably support about one real magazine.  Maybe two of them could hold up in 2017 but I doubt it could last another 5-10 years with two. 

Dividing up the demand among several mags just makes it all worse.  It decreases the money available for each one, which turns them all into clones of each other.  They all end up covering same few most popular subjects all the time.  And they all end up stuffed with tons of ads just to make ends meet.   

[TeeWJay426]

Randy is doing fine. He is doing some freelance magazine stuff, some consulting, some restoration work, doing what he needs to stay afloat. He's a good guy who still lives and breathes Mopar, and deserved better than he got at MM.

[Kern Dog]

I agree there. Corporations can be pretty brutal and heartless with their changes.