[Magazines] Autosport requests your input on redesign

[John Turner]

Originally Posted by driftwood

sounds like a load of old bullochs and totally unecessary
I am wondering if AS employ and racing journolists or they have hired the writers at Viz?

ive not bothered buying the revamped comic looked at 2 issues on ASDA`s shelf and still not likely to spend my advertising budget in the magazine until it gets better
for now Motorsport will get my hard earned advertising budget
remember that was once a Haymarket run mag till they screwed it up and now the new managers have got it back on track

Broken down record, Drifty; same post umpteen times; suggest that unless you have something contructive and/or positive to say about a mag that you admit you haven't really bothered to read properly for ages, it's probably not worth you bothering with this thread either.

[John Turner]

Originally Posted by Benny1664

I preferred it how it was. Not too keen on all the new formatting and artwork.. I get the impression there is not so much content and what is there is expanded to fill the space..

A perfectly valid view but, which of course, just shows what a thankless task it is trying to cater for everybody

[driftwood]

I like old records better than this modern durge
my point is constructive the mag has not moved on much from the poor example we have had to endure the past 7 years
the REAL racers do not buy it anymore and i bet many proper race fans have stopped buyimg it
as an advertiser in the comic i dont want sun readers buying the mag i need the industry buying it but its content is not intelligent enough
you would not have had in the 70` 80`s AS the nonsense of Brawn RB mock up it dealt purely with the facts of the day so if the Journo are having to write up this cock up /mock up story they are either bored in the office or plain lazy as they have not done enough research at the races to write better race reports get some interviews to provide more info or the editor is cuting out what they have written to simplify the articles/ race reports
The Pit n paddock section used to be a great place for drivers/teams to report on new cars sponsor or some incident in more detail
it i snothard for the Journo to get the info either at the circuit or from some "press releases" or fax the driver send in on monday morning

If i have to sound positive i can say its better than it was but it aint as good as it used to be and its free country i can give my views until the editor pays attention and makes some more changes to suit the real racers who used to buy it

AS might have an increase in sales to the sunday TV GP "watchers " but it has lost probably 50% of its established readers who have "religiously" bought the comic the past 30 of years and it needs to do better

[John Turner]

I don't think it would be fair to dissect the various aspects of your above post, so I will simply say it's the same old, same old, Drifty. You've jumped on the Brawn/RB article mentioned above to continue your repetitive criticism, and ignored all the positive posts since the revamp. So either you are reading it more than you care to admit, or you are not reading it much, in which case your criticisms are at best, out of date, or at worst, invalid.

[davyboy]

Drifty, there's little point in creating a facsimile of what Autosport was in the 1970s/1980s as things are different today. Back then it was the ONLY access channel for information on motorsport. With the pervasiveness of 24 hour media and the web, there are many more sources for such information and they are immediate. Hence the need for Autosport to find a position that will complement rather than compete with these channels. That will necessitate something very different from what ran in the 1970s and 1980s. OK, maybe there are a few things they could do better with the revamp, on the whole I think they've manage to accomplish what needed to be done. If you scrutinize the last few issues of Autosport and catalogue the amount of information they contain, you'll see its actually far greater than any of its predecessors... be they from the last few months, or the last few decades. Given the environment in which it has to operate, i.e. no longer the motorsport journalistic monopoly it used to be, I really feel that the current iteration of the mag is possibly the best yet.

[old man]

You cannot please all of the people all of the time and davyboy is correct, things have moved on.

I admit to being one of the sad people if Drifty's eyes that are still buying after an awful long time and I have been very critical of it over the past few years but it is definately better now than in these recent years. We used to buy it for news/results of racing and for cars for sale or spares that we needed urgently, I would berate my newsagent if it was not there first thing Thursday because I could miss a deal. All that urgency is gone, when I wanted the result of the Renault WS 3.5 on Sunday I looked it up on the AS website. Embassy's receiver sold all their gear on the web, not in AS but did advertise the sale there although it was actually an American website. I have every sympathy with the management of AS now, it is not easy but they are producing a much better magazine.

I have said earlier on this thread that I am not happy with their GT reporting but I still buy the mag and read the ads Drifty

[driftwood]

i accept the world has changed and the interweb provides data the minute it has happened but i prefer to read the news sitting on the duny in tranquility than reading the websites
i can flick the mag pages to read what i want and when i want even in bed whilst dragon lady installs her curlers- she would not like to see the laptop on the duvet!

[Super Hans]

It's certainly the best it's been in years. My only gripe is that it still can't be read page-by-page like a book.

[driftwood]

also you need to sit looking every website for info and is rather time consuming

a magazine you can carry with you pick up put down when u want or have to
employers will not be happy with staff reading endless websites but could tolerate reading a magazine as they can hit you around the head with it to teach you a lesson " not in my time"

[AvdB]

Dear all,

Thanks for the all feedback on the new look, I'm really pleased that it seems to gone down so well with the majority of you.

Old Man, I'm sorry you feel the way you do about the GT coverage, especially as we devoted half of the LMS report to those classes. I don't think there's ever been greater space given over to GT1/2.

In general the response to the redesign has been incredibly positive - and this has been mirrored in the sales too. Of course it's not perfect and we will be striving to make improvements wherever possible. Your comments here is very helpful in that regard and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on future issues.

Best,

Andrew

[old man]

Originally Posted by AvdB

Dear all,

Thanks for the all feedback on the new look, I'm really pleased that it seems to gone down so well with the majority of you.

Old Man, I'm sorry you feel the way you do about the GT coverage, especially as we devoted half of the LMS report to those classes. I don't think there's ever been greater space given over to GT1/2.

In general the response to the redesign has been incredibly positive - and this has been mirrored in the sales too. Of course it's not perfect and we will be striving to make improvements wherever possible. Your comments here is very helpful in that regard and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on future issues.

Best,

Andrew

Sorry to dispute your comment Andrew but the LMP1 report from Barcelona was about 1000 words, the LMP2 report about 300, the GT1 150 with a tiny picture and GT2 about 180/200 with a slightly bigger picture but mentioned only the JMW Fearri and the Felbermayr Porsche. I make that a total of about 350 for GT against 1300 for LMP with 5 LMP pictures and this is no better than in the last few years.

Granted, the GT1 class had just 4 cars, itself a point worthy of comment but GT2 had 13 entries including the champion team from the last 2 years and a Government Minister, neither of whom were mentioned at all.

Have I missed something or misunderstood your comment?

[alfaman]

One of the new ideas was the 'View from the bank' where an 'ordinary' spectator could write a 200 word report on a meeting they'd been to that weekend. That seems to have died a death. I think there were 2 or 3 but as more events were held the actual race reports seem to have squeezed this out.
I'm not surprised because space is always at a premium - for example this past weekend 25/26 April there were 9 meetings across the UK so those all need to get their coverage...
And I thought the first couple of efforts were pretty dire anyway! They didn't offer any real insight 'from the bank'....
I wonder what the uptake from readers was? If Autosport was inundated or if they were struggling to find ones they could print.

[davyboy]

If you haven't seen a copy of this week's mag yet, then pick it up. It is truely outstanding and possibly one of the best put together issues I've seen in decades.

o The BTCC report is absolutely excellent - 4 pages long for the touring cars alone, with exactly the type of depth and coverage we need.

o The Formula Renault feature is brilliant... so too is the feature on Fortec.

o While I figured that the Talledega 'wreck' would be the prime candidate for the picture of the week, that one truely epitomizes the ferocity of a NASCAR accident close up for those who've never been up close to one at an American Superspeedway [I have !].

Its clear that the mag has stepped up several gears and if the descentors of the revamp aren't happy with this... they won't be satisfied. A fantastic pat on the back for the Autosport editorial staff.

[Burnsie]

This week's copy of Autosport hasn't dropped through my letterbox yet, but I have just seen the "flick-through" preview on Autosport.com.

I accept that I'm a bit biased (okay, very biased) but in a week when the A1GP Championship was won by Team Ireland at Brands Hatch, and there wasn't even a Formula One race, it is very frustrating to see a photograph of Jenson Button dominating the front cover while Adam Carroll is down in the bottom corner. To be honest I'm quite disappointed with Autosport here. As far as F1 is concerned, this has been quite a "nothing" week, but on the other hand an international motorsport championship has been won and lost. To me it's a no-brainer about what should be the feature story, so I'm baffled about why 'How Rivals Plan To Beat Button' is the main headline. My previous posts in this thread show that I have been supportive of Autosport in their efforts to improve the design of their magazine, and I am confident that the quality of the A1GP write-up will be very good, but I'm still left irritated that we (the readers) are repeatedly being treated like F1 Racing readers.

Now, to end with something positive. I have been looking forward to sitting down to read the Gilles Villeneuve GP Gold article tomorrow, and the Hall Of Fame feature also looks very good. So to conclude, keep up the excellent work but please, please, please get rid of the F1 obsession - it's not what Autosport should be about!

Paul

[andy97]

Agreed

[the sniper]

Got to agree with Burnsie, I'm a critic of A1GP but even I think Adam deserved to be the main picture on the cover this week.

I guess Autosport must have done some research to suggest that the mag sells better if F1's on the cover, but I really don't think it's necessary every week...

Other then that, Autosport's been great since the redesign.

[John Turner]

Guys, might I suggest that the Haymarket beancounters, not the editorial staff, require F1 to feature on the front cover 99% of the time because it attracts the F1 fan; the rest of us true racing anoraks need only ignore it and go to the important bit which is between the covers!

[driftwood]

The worry for real race fans not the bi weekly F1 tv watcher is that AS will slowly slip back into its old ways and soon they will start the nonsense headlines or stories

When you look back at old AS mags each week the cover was different from BTCC to Rallying Indycar as well as F1 covering what ever was the big event the previous weekend and i think it was insulting to the Irish team and race fans that AS did not feature the A1 GP British round winner on its cover
how many people will buy the comic who do not normally buy it cos it had Brawn F1 car on the cover

[kipper]

Originally Posted by driftwood

how many people will buy the comic who do not normally buy it cos it had Brawn F1 car on the cover

An alternative question would be how many people would not have purchased Autosport if Adam Carroll had been on the cover. Going by previous posts on this forum, the covers that marked Andy Priaulx's WTCC titles sold relatively few copies. As such, it is perhaps unsurprising (although disappointing) that Autosport ran with the cover they did. On a more positive note, in my view the contents of the magazine (which is surely the most important thing) did pay sufficient attention to Carroll's and Ireland's success.

[davyboy]

I think John's probably got it right... it appears that the cover splash must be influenced by the bean counters at Haymarket. Rest assured that when you turn it over, coverage of Adam Carroll and the Irish victory is wall to wall. To see the full bleed double page spread image of the Team Ireland car a couple of pages in was awesome... This issue of the magazine is once again excellent with features on Brabham and Gilles Villeneuve GP report.

As they say, never judge a book by its cover... though from a personal point it would have been so nice to have seen Adam Carroll emblazened across it. Maybe it will happen when he gets to F1 !

[Knowlesy]

When did you get onto the Haymarket payroll davyboy?

[driftwood]

when john turner bought him a pint with his payroll proceeds !
all i will get his a clout from Johns empty beer glass!

[davyboy]

My posts do sound like some sort of Haymarket-o-file don't they I suppose its the release of pent up frustration at how bad Autosport had got before this make over. I've been a subscriber since the early 1980s and I can honestly say that the last few years were among its lowest ebbs. The relaunch is a real breath of fresh air and definitely worth a look for anyone that felt the way I did about its predecessor. Its like the return of the prodical son I suppose

[davyboy]

Originally Posted by driftwood

when john turner bought him a pint with his payroll proceeds !
all i will get his a clout from Johns empty beer glass!

Kevan, take a look at this week's mag in the shops... there's a major feature on Brabham [6 pages], Nigel Roebuck's full report from the 1981 Spanish GP [4 pages] followed by an interview with Jacques Laffite about his battle with Gilles Villeneuve in the race and Henri Pescarolo's race of my life, Le Mans 1973... and that's just the old stuff. Honestly there's a night and day difference from what it used to be.

[Burnsie]

Originally Posted by davyboy

As they say, never judge a book by its cover...

Of course not, I was just having a mini-rant that an international world championship title-decider didn't warrant a main headline.

Originally Posted by davyboy

...there's a major feature on Brabham [6 pages], Nigel Roebuck's full report from the 1981 Spanish GP [4 pages] followed by an interview with Jacques Laffite about his battle with Gilles Villeneuve in the race and Henri Pescarolo's race of my life, Le Mans 1973... and that's just the old stuff.

Yes the contents of this week's issue are superb, it is possibly one of the best since their re-release.

So in conclusion: Autosport good, Haymarket bad