[Magazines] Autosport Magazine - Your Opinions (merged)

[diz]

Originally posted by John McIlroy
Diz, you say turn Autosport into a magazine. That's precisely what we're trying to do. Reducing the size and number of pictures and merely running entire pages of text will achieve the exact opposite.

So you are trying to turn it into a magazine. Just what do you think it was before then?
Reducing the size and number of pictures will not end up with entire pages of text. It will become more text informative, supplemented with adequate photo content [smaller, not less]. Big is not always best. As I mentioned earlier, the three small colour photos in Marcus's track test were sufficient, without the need for the same three cars to take up a further 7/8 of a page in a 'family album shot'.

Before I leave, take this as a 'Customer Suggestion'. Why not run one future issue - on a convenient anniversary date - as a "How Autosport was in the 70s" Special Edition. It would be very interesting to get the feedback on that.

[Knowlesy]

OK, maybe the Max Power comparison was a bit extreme.....

Anyways, what I don't understand is why the pictures have to be massive and text reduced. I mean, no-one will stop buying it if there were fewer pictures and a lot to read.......?

I have little knowledge of editing so excuse my naivety, but does putting bigger pictures and simplifying the stories actually increase sales.

If that is the case, then i am bloody worried about the people who are buying magazines nowadays.

As I say, I will carry on buying Autosport as it is a fair read and has its good points. The F1 race reports are very good for instance (although I still yearn for Roebucks return), as is Nigels column. And there can be some good features....the F1 public survey and the Barrichello article a few weeks back.

But if a competitor came into the market with a bit more depth and total concentration on articles and less of the gloss, then I think it would sell a lot better than Autosport in its current form would.

That's why I can't understand why Autosport has gradually, over the years, become more and more dumbed down.

Believe me, those of us who are loyal readers will not be overwhelmed by in depth stuff. We'd lap it up!

And I truly believe there are more hardcore readership than casual readership.

[ASCII Man]

Is this 'Autosport' magazine UK only?
Never seen it in my entire life... :confused:

[diz]

Originally posted by ASCII Man
Is this 'Autosport' magazine UK only?
Never seen it in my entire life... :confused:

Mainly UK, but worldwide as it tries to cover the likes of Brazilian F3, Asian Touring Cars and your own Belgian ProCar thingy amongst other series.
It would be interesting to find out the breakdown of the worldwide and UK circulation.

[John McIlroy]

Hi all,

It was a magazine in the 1970s and before, it was a magazine in the 1980s, it was a magazine in the 1990s and its a magazine in this decade as well. All I'm saying is that you appear to be expecting Autosport to still be produced to 1970s production values and editorial stance - and that would be commercial suicide.

Knowlsey you are correct - that IS the trend in magazines. Look around you - look at the television advertisements for lifestyle weekly 'mens' mags' like Zoo. I wouldn't for one minute suggest that we're aiming to replicate their editorial stance - they ran Alex Zanardi's accident in all its horror, for example - but there's no doubt that mags like that are another competitor for us in terms of people flicking along the newsagents' shelves. There are areas of the market, several areas, which simply didn't exist when Autosport was printing thumbnail photos and 8000 words of text per page in the mid-1970s.

We are trying to work on more technical features and hopefully that will become apparent in the months to come. But for example, we put Colin McRae into the Le Mans-winning Bentley earlier on this year and people complained we'd given it too many pages... One of the trends you will notice in months to come is that features, our major features, will become longer - so whereas before we'd barely go beyond four pages for anything, we're learning to go beyond that and give it eight pages or whatever. But good photography, well used, has to be a part of that.

John

[Kicking-back]

John

You'll never please all the people all the time, I know from my line of work we have to be increasingly research-driven.

You're doing a great job of keeping Autosport alive and thriving in a very difficult and competitive market.

One of the biggest reasons I believe the magazine doesn't take as long to read as it did back in the day is the growth of the internet.

However, the magazine still captivates my interest and long may it continue.

[Vitesse]

Autosport circulation figures

[Asp]

Originally posted by John McIlroy
I'll start comparing the mag to Max Power when we feature ... considerably more nipples.

When? Is that a promise then?

Originally posted by ASCII Man
Is this 'Autosport' magazine UK only?
Never seen it in my entire life... :confused:

I've bought it over in Canada once, therefore can confirm it can be bought worldwide
Going back to the topic, we have to remember, as people have said, that Autosport does not, and cannot be an ideal magazine for hard-core enthusiasts. If it tried to be, it probably would go under. And at the end of the day - an Autosport that is 'good' is better than no Autosport...

[foreversideways]

John, methinks you doth protest to much !!. Most people are saying that they lap up the Roebuck and Pye columns. Dont get me wrong we all love pictures but pros are very important to . I thing the technical stuff on F1 is excellent, the gossip less so. I don't have a real problem with the accident feature this week as i am sure one of the attractions of motor sport to the spectator has always been accidents. Honestly though you are going to struggle with this kind of feature when sky have the footage. Competitive market is a term which has been used here but who are your competition ?.Are you serving the enthusiast or the casual reader. Autosport is a specialist magazine. The PC Shopper or Golf world buyer is not about to switch to Autosport. I also buy a number of specialist magazines and they have no pretence to attract the casual reader. What really worries me is that the font of all knowledge MOTOR SPORT is also re-inventing itself next month. I await the next issue with trepidation.

[sideways steve]

Good evening Forum.
John, top magazine and a good issue today i thought.
It could do with more reading material though.
My copy, as I am sure do many, lives in the WC.
It has recently though been thoroughly divulged by Tuesday.
The magazine, not the toilet.
This could be a personal problem though, now I come to think of it. (old age)
Could do with more pics of Big Jag,s going sideways.

Good Work fella

[foreversideways]

How many more people on this forum are going sideways , I must change my name

[diz]

Originally posted by foreversideways
I also buy a number of specialist magazines

I think we all did when we were younger, but not at your age surely.
I tried to convince my mum [why did they have to clean under the beds?] that I had started doing Human Biology at 'O'Level and was doing extra homework. It didn't work though and I ended up like a Tory MP with a damned good thrashing.

[Knowlesy]

I understand John.

Carry on making the magazine as well as you can within the current competitive market.

As for the Zoo thing.....I was only whingeing about the Zanardi accident feature last week....hehehe. Rather too graphic for my liking.

BTW....the McRae feature was very good and not too long at all. That was in the first of the "new look" version wasn't it?

More of them would be great!

[Knowlesy]

Originally posted by diz
[why did they have to clean under the beds?]

Off topic, but yes, why do they clean under the beds?

When I was at the GP, my old girl decided to clean under my bed and was surprised to find my collection of, ahem, Digital Versatile Discs. They wer hidden under all my Autosports incidentally!

And now I'll never hear the last of it!

[foreversideways]

I would like to qualify my previous post regarding specialst mags . I was not refering to the smutty variety to which diz has alluded. However i am sure there is more chance of hell freezing over than converting patrons of said publications to Autosport, unless as suggested in a previous post Autosport include more N****E

[acf8181]

ok, i'm gonna stick up for the magazine...i think its great. every now and again there will be something slightly controlversial, but thats true of any mag/paper/tv show!

maybe the people who are moaning are older than me (i was born in '81), but surely they have to realise that you have to move with the times...or you die.

or maybe everyone else has more spare time than me (and i'm unemployed at the mo - got any jobs going for a budding racing driver john ) cause i don't always manage to read through the whole mag.

[PaulSands]

moving with the times shouldnt always mean going for the lowest common denominator though should it? I totally agree in moving with the times but prefer an "onwards and upwards" approach.
we shouldn't be dumbing things down, grant people a little intelligence, depth and an attention span...if a topic is complex explain it clearly.
controversy is great too when it's serving a purpose or proving a point. the press should always be stirring things up, letting the powers that be know that somebody is watching them and will ensure that the truth is told. sensationalism for its own sake is not controversy it's just cheap.

[Graham Goodwin]

The one thing missing from John's editorial is of course the major reason why the mag will have run the feature in the first place - To sell more copies.

Ultimately that's the motivation behind any feature - to catch the attention of existing or potential readers - The fact that it features so prominently on the front of the mag means its likely to be targeting the latter - Why?

Well, it makes good business sense and, judging from the current subscription offers being made by Autosport they are clearly worried about the challenge posed from other media to their traditional market. The feature looks to be trying to draw 'floating' readers from the likes of Zoo magazine.

That's the likely reasoning behind it but it doesn't change the fact that captioning like "shunt heaven" and "flamin' hell" is pretty tawdry stuff in a magazine that numbers a large number of racers in its readership.

[Damon]

I was disappointed to see that Autosport had decided on a 100 Greatest Crashes feature. To me it has no place in a publication of Autosport's standing. However, this won't stop me reading the rest of the mag, imo 5th Column is worth the entry fee alone.

[BertMk2]

I'm probably the sort of reader they're trying to snag with the garish covers I don't buy Autosport every week but if there's something of interest in there I'll get it (the same really applies to Motorsport news and track and race car which are the other two publications I normally take a look at).

I normally get MN after a grand prix and SEMSEC meetings, track and race if there's an interesting article or two (rallycross, Group B etc) and Autosport after SEMSEC meetings or if there's anything else of interest in there. Autosport does a good job of covering the major events (which are what sells to the majority of people). The clubbie bits at the back are of limited interest to the wider population - most of us on here take an interest for one or more of these reasons:

- We're competing.
- We know people who're competing.
- We're total petrolheads.

Not everybody out there feels the same way, I've got no doubt there are vast swathes of people who'd quite happily read Autosport if it had no clubbie content whatsoever, we should be glad it still covers the club scene at all. If Autosport had more club content then no doubt there are people that would complain about that too, the best thing is to try and achieve a balance - you can't please all the people all of the time, Autosport does a fair job of trying to cater for all tastes and should be applauded for that.

[Andrew Kitson]

Fair point Bert but I wish they would cut down on the size of some of the pointless photos in other ares of the mag to give the hacks more freedom to describe a race as they see it, rather than 'X rounded off the day by winning the modified saloons'.
There was a magazine for purely club racing, 'Ingear' and we know what happened to that. I appreciate they can't include a large amount of club reports but an extra couple of pages to allow for more words would be great.

[BertMk2]

Originally posted by Andrew Kitson
...give the hacks more freedom to describe a race as they see it, rather than 'X rounded off the day by winning the modified saloons'.

I know what you mean there! A couple of times I looked in Autosport and MN at a race report that says "X won from Y after a race long battle" or something similar - it just doesn't do justice to what actually took place but space is at a premium so I guess that's all we'll get for now. Pictures of the cars in the clubbie section are useful too - if sponsors can actually see photos of the cars with their logos clearly visible it has to help.

I write the race reports for a friend of mine who races at SEMSEC meetings - these get put on his website (see the homepage on my profile - shameless plug ) and sent out to the sponsors on a regular basis to try and help keep them involved. With the lack of space available in magazines for club level events using the web like this does make things available to a wider audience (I'll admit though that the amount of people who'd look for this stuff is limited).

With so many series about if each was given a little more space you'd soon be looking at several pages more clubbie stuff in each edition - whilst we may see that as a good thing there would doubtless be those who complained. To some extent it's a no win situation for the Editors - there'll always be people with polar opposite views on these sort of subjects.

[John McIlroy]

Hi everyone,

What did happen to In Gear?

You're right about Club space. The amount of pages given to Club went up in 2002 AND 2003, and looks set to go up again in 2004. I've got the pagination figures here on my spreadsheet to remind me. And yet it's harder than ever to provide adequate coverage for everyone because British national motorsport has diversified, split, fragmented, call it what you will.

You know the story - become fed up at not winning or being stuck in a class battle, get six cars, start your own races, call yourself a championship and then compain because you don't get a photograph in from every round. Sorry to say it, but it's a common occurrence....

John

[JimW]

John

Thanks for being brave and continuing to stick your head above the parapet. It does help to understand the thinking.

Contrary to some people here, it was Autosport's photography which made me change to it from Muttering Nudes (at the time when MN went tabloid in headlines and writing style as well). It is still the photos which make me buy it sometimes. (Well MAWP and Nigel Roebuck as well. Oh, and Jim Bamber).

Regards

Jim

[sprocket]

Think what you like about it,can you find a better alternative ??? As with all sports there are plenty of"managers/editors in the grandstand".
I think maybe it should have been 100 crashes etc caught on camera,as mine & danny watts 3 years ago were'nt.
Richard Sproston.