When a "magazine" is mostly just ads (even the articles) why pay to read it?
A friend dropped off a pile of lifestyle magazines they get - titles like "Veranda" and "Magnolia" and "Southern Living" or "Garden and Gun" (I kid-you-not on that last one). Some of them look like they were never read. And it ain't hard to figure out why. It seems most magazines - the few that are left and the few that were around a few years ago and are no more - are just advertising supplements. The articles are buried between pages and pages of ads and the ads look like articles and vice-versa. And this was by design - a bad design choice that turned off readers.
In the old days, the cover of a magazine would have a compelling photo and it would be captioned with the title of the accompanying article and what page it was on. Not so today - you have to hunt for the article (again, by design, to get you to flip through the ads, or to prevent you from reading the article and then putting the magazine back on the rack). I noticed a new trend - cover photos that are compelling but have no accompanying article or any relationship whatsoever to the content of the magazine. It is mildly infuriating - false advertising, if you will. It is like a third-grader assembled these magazines - a third-grader with an amazingly short attention span.
What articles still exist are shorter than ever before - if they are not, in fact, thinly disguised advertisements. I am looking at you, New Yorker! What was this obsession with Las Vegas themed articles? Oh, right, they paid big bucks for "advertising supplements" so you went along with it and made the articles adverts as well. The New Yorker used to be famous for its "fact-checking" section (which was spoofed in the movie Desk Set). They even wrote an article about their fact-checking department, right before they laid them all off. The New Yorker used to be staid and intellectual, but today, our generation has taken over and we have cartoons by Bruce McCall and humorous articles by David Sedaris. A lot has changed over the years. Our generation won - a Pyrrhic victory.
So, I flip through modern "magazines" in a matter of minutes and them toss them aside. They are as annoying as these "news" sites that have pop-ups, pop-unders, and auto-play videos (as well as the inevitable "before you leave...you may be interested in..." screens). The articles on such sites are little more than a repetition of the headline. "Three found dead in domestic shooting in Aurora, Colorado" screams the headline - the "article" basically re-states this, with a quote from the local Sheriff. No names, no details, no motives, no nothing. News today is a big nothingburger.
And these "magazines" are about the same. It is no wonder that the format is essentially dead. You try to read a magazine and it is like the aforementioned annoying news sites. You have to scroll turn through pages of ads just to read the next paragraph of an article. And 50% of the text of the article is "continued on page xx" because they chop up the articles to get you to paw through more pages of ads. Magazines have been SPAMed.
At the same time, content has suffered as writers and photographers have been laid off and editors let go. The content is no longer a rich stew but a thin gruel that is totally unappetizing. I guess money drives this - put in more ads, make more money. Cut costs by cutting real content. Profit. Or perhaps it is the inevitable result of more and more "screen time." People read less and less, so the number of subscribers has dropped. To keep up profits, more ads have to go in and more content goes out. This, in turn, drives more subscribers away, as they can get shitty, ad-laced content for free, on their phones. Why pay to be advertised to? They should be paying us!
For a long time the financial model of newspapers and magazines worked that way. Subscription fees and newsstand sales covered the cost of production, while advertising revenue was pure profit. Many magazines would discount subscription rates or even give out subscriptions for free in order to boost circulation numbers. Since ad rates are based on circulation (much as television ad rates are based on ratings) it can be more profitable to simply give away the magazine and rely entirely on ad revenue. In fact, we have magazines like that locally - "Coastal Living" and whatnot, which have few articles, lots of photos of locals at charity events and ads - lots of ads. You can find these mags for free in the lobby of hotels and restaurants, usually upscale ones.
Of course, a lot of people like to look at ads - hence the rise of "influencers" online. If there was no one to tell you what to buy, what on earth would you ever do? You might end up being laughed at for not having a Stanley cup in a collectible color! The horror of it all!
Sadly, it seems there are a host of people who need and crave that kind of guidance. These are the folks who follow cult religions mindlessly because they crave a finite set of rules, or failing that, a charismatic leader who tells them what to do and think. They want advice columnists to give them explicit instruction in life. Hell, people even ask me for advice - and I ain't giving it!
So we have adverts. And apparently, from what I can divine from reading and seeing them, people are paranoid they have some sort of weird disease or that their laundry smells funny. At least that is what I see on Pluto TV. And in the magazines, too.
