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Old 16 Jun 2004, 14:48 (Ref:1005888)   #120
RTH
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Join Date: Sep 2003
Location:
Hertfordshire England
Posts: 438
RTH should be qualifying in the top 10 on the grid
I have bought every issue of Autosport since 1967 and I have never been more dissatisfied with it than now. There is far too much, waffle, full colour pages wasted on such meaningful images as drivers foreheads and sky, writers too timid to say anything in anyway critical of anyone or anything. Talking everything up all the time when its clear to everyone the interest & spectacle is fast disappearing, for so many reasons from high spectator and competitor fees to "one make " overkill, and the contemptuous treatment of the paying public by the clubs and the circuit owners, its dying the death of a thousand cuts - and one by one the tracks will become housing estates, despite all the assurances Brands will I am sure go under the bulldozer .

Autosport should be a campaigning magazine , not sleepwalking the motorsport enthusiast in to oblivion as it does now.

Towing the ITV & FIA ,FOM line all the time.
In Nick Britten's "Private Ear " days the magazine was independent and fearless, now its propaganda. Just who is it aimed at - looks like 12 yr old boys , but do they have £2.80 every week in enough numbers ? There is far too much F1 - we have all endured 4 hours of tedious coverage over the weekend on events so dull they are best fogotten , - the last thing needed is 25 pages of going all over it again.

National, club and historic racing in contrast gets scant coverage, compressed in to minimal space at the back with a couldn't care less attitude, one tiny picture and a handful of lines to cover a whole days club racing.

Dozens of wasted pages - yet the small ads are obscenely expensive - something which people used to buy the magazine for alone - and healthy vibrant 'buy & sell' columns promoted club racing .

I think it needs a whole new philosophy, its core values should be a weekly news magazine , I like many others are losing patience with it.
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