Some of you will know that BLENDER – launched by Felix Dennis some years ago as a sort of US Q, then bought by some other company two years ago – has gone under. Occasional RBP contributor Jason Gross, founder and editor of the excellent PERFECT SOUND FOREVER ezine, had this to say about the implications on PopMatters:
This is hardly a major surprise – why should the rock magazine fraternity not catch a cold when the mainstream print media is suffering full blown flu, or something much more serious.
Strangely, while I feel it quite natural that I should go to the newspaper websites daily for my news fix (I stress that, as an ex-journalist, I would happily pay, pay something, to check out the Guardian, etc, on a frequent basis), I still feel the need, the hunger, to read my rock’n'roll on glossy paper rather than via the blue, electric hum of the computer screen.
But the pop-in-print culture is in serious decline: I know this because when I teach students of mine about the richness, the glories, the importance of the British music press, I am aware of just how few – even popular music undergraduates – are going to those publications anymore for their fix of articles, interviews and reviews.
Five years ago it was three-quarters who still read from the page; today, it’s possibly 25%. On that steep downward curve of the graph does disaster lie.
What they do devour is online and, like the daily and weekly newspapers of the Western world are discovering all to speedily, people now expect their info buck free, whether it concerns news, sport or culture.
I remember that extraordinary launch of two years ago when Popworld Pulp was unveiled to great and expensive fanfare. The weekly mag, carrying the branding of a very popular Channel Four television strand, lasted a mere fortnight. If ever the name of a mag (where did that title come from?) presciently summed up it future, this was it. Within an instant, the publication with cripplingly embarrassingly sales, was just that: pulp – its huge print-run returned to to the paper mill for recycling in the face of a non-existent audience. With that dismal flop behind us, I doubt, sadly, that we’ll ever see a rock mag opening again.
I missed the launch and instant nosedive of the splendidly named PP… any copies going on eBay, or anyone got a spare for the RBP archives?! Only half-kidding. I’ll wager that print will be dead within 3 years. The bigger question: how long before “Free” goes into freefall?
PS Have you seen the interesting array of old rock mag titles at Beat Books? A complete run of Let It Rock and this oddity (to me, at least), a full run of a publication called Pop Weekly. Ever seen it?
I’m personally not surprised that the print version of Blender eventually tanked. Although it contained some very good, or at least very funny writing, it wasn’t really a music mag, more of a lads’ mag with a music focus (viz. the editorial policy of scantily clad lovelies on every cover and many inside pages).
Moreover most of its early staffers were refugees from UK lads’ mags and it wasn’t ’til much later in its life that Felix D. and his MD (Irishman, Steve Colvin) started poaching heavy hitters from Rolling Stone. But of course the inevitable migration of its target market’s reading habits online and declining ad. revenues were the real killers.
Interestingly – if you’re a media anorak, that is – Blender was originally a DVD/CD magazine created by staff from Felix’s earlier yank effort, a Smash Hits doppelganger called Star Hits for which I did a little work back in the dark ages. (It was canned after a few issues due to poor sales and high production costs). In an sense then, now that it’s only available in digital form, Blender has come full circle, but I shan’t miss it.
5 Responses to Demise of BLENDER magazine – and what it means
This is hardly a major surprise – why should the rock magazine fraternity not catch a cold when the mainstream print media is suffering full blown flu, or something much more serious.
Strangely, while I feel it quite natural that I should go to the newspaper websites daily for my news fix (I stress that, as an ex-journalist, I would happily pay, pay something, to check out the Guardian, etc, on a frequent basis), I still feel the need, the hunger, to read my rock’n'roll on glossy paper rather than via the blue, electric hum of the computer screen.
But the pop-in-print culture is in serious decline: I know this because when I teach students of mine about the richness, the glories, the importance of the British music press, I am aware of just how few – even popular music undergraduates – are going to those publications anymore for their fix of articles, interviews and reviews.
Five years ago it was three-quarters who still read from the page; today, it’s possibly 25%. On that steep downward curve of the graph does disaster lie.
What they do devour is online and, like the daily and weekly newspapers of the Western world are discovering all to speedily, people now expect their info buck free, whether it concerns news, sport or culture.
I remember that extraordinary launch of two years ago when Popworld Pulp was unveiled to great and expensive fanfare. The weekly mag, carrying the branding of a very popular Channel Four television strand, lasted a mere fortnight. If ever the name of a mag (where did that title come from?) presciently summed up it future, this was it. Within an instant, the publication with cripplingly embarrassingly sales, was just that: pulp – its huge print-run returned to to the paper mill for recycling in the face of a non-existent audience. With that dismal flop behind us, I doubt, sadly, that we’ll ever see a rock mag opening again.
I missed the launch and instant nosedive of the splendidly named PP… any copies going on eBay, or anyone got a spare for the RBP archives?! Only half-kidding. I’ll wager that print will be dead within 3 years. The bigger question: how long before “Free” goes into freefall?
I’ve got a few complete print-runs of rock mags and, yes, Popworld Pulp is one of ‘em. Even have the pre-launch dummy!
No spares, as such….
PS Have you seen the interesting array of old rock mag titles at Beat Books? A complete run of Let It Rock and this oddity (to me, at least), a full run of a publication called Pop Weekly. Ever seen it?
http://www.beatbooks.com/cgi-bin/beatbooks/21348.html
I’m personally not surprised that the print version of Blender eventually tanked. Although it contained some very good, or at least very funny writing, it wasn’t really a music mag, more of a lads’ mag with a music focus (viz. the editorial policy of scantily clad lovelies on every cover and many inside pages).
Moreover most of its early staffers were refugees from UK lads’ mags and it wasn’t ’til much later in its life that Felix D. and his MD (Irishman, Steve Colvin) started poaching heavy hitters from Rolling Stone. But of course the inevitable migration of its target market’s reading habits online and declining ad. revenues were the real killers.
Interestingly – if you’re a media anorak, that is – Blender was originally a DVD/CD magazine created by staff from Felix’s earlier yank effort, a Smash Hits doppelganger called Star Hits for which I did a little work back in the dark ages. (It was canned after a few issues due to poor sales and high production costs). In an sense then, now that it’s only available in digital form, Blender has come full circle, but I shan’t miss it.