You have lost some competition.

You guys just reminded me to cancel my recurring R&T subscription.

Cant say I will miss HS&E... always thumbed through it at B&N but rarely bought it. Good writing but nothing to rival CM, lots of previously published photos, etc. Tim, Joe, David, Tom and the gang here at GM/CM have it nailed... I always learn something in each issue. ...

I WILL miss Bimmer, if that post is true, however. Great magazine, terrific photos, features and road tests... a lot of what Roundel could and should be. Wondered why I couldn't find it on the rack last week.

I used to get HS&E, the biggest reason is their focus was a bit different to CM. CM leans towards the more racing or sporting side, where HS&E tended towards the guy who didn't really do motorsports. They also had a trend towards more oddball cars at times. I thought it changed a bit after the original editor left. CM still arrives in my mailbox every issue, where I cancelled HS&E several years ago. That tells you something.

"They had just over a 20% ad/edit ratio. Our's in CMS is over 50%"

Does subscription revenue have any consequence in magazine profits or is it all ad revenue that keeps the presses running? Considering that all of the bookstore cafes let you pull magazines (and books) from the racks and just abuse them to the point that they couldn't be sold anymore, and with so many offers for discount subscriptions, seems like the printed magazine is almost a simple vehicle for carrying the ads. When those dry up, regardless of the quality of the editorial content, the magazines cease to be.

What an INSANE publishing model. Common, I'm sure, but still pretty much up-side-down from what seems right. It's like we living in three parallel worlds, the readers buy it don't buy for the content, the publishers only publish the magazine based on ad placement/sales, and the writers and contributors just hope that they have a job next year and the internet doesn't drive them to a full time job as a bagger at Shop & Save.

Weird . . . from every angle.

The magazine financial model is selling readers to advertisers. You can get more readers by offering stupid-cheap subscription rates or by offering content people want to see. The better the demographics of your readers, the more they're worth to advertisers. The reason the magazines want you to subscribe is because it's far more cost-effective than trying to get readers on the newsstand - although you can view newsstand sales as a good metric to see how various cover designs and editorial content appeal to people.

It's always interesting reading the media kits for magazines. I was recently looking at the one for the Monterey Historics program, and surprisingly it's not much different than CM's demographics. That's based on general recollection of the latter, I haven't looked at it for a while.

^^ Keith, I'll shoot you our current media kits. Our demographics have changed a bit over the years. Somewhat surprisingly, according to our latest survey, GRM readers are getting wealthier. The average CMS reader has always been a wealthier guy, and that trend continues.

Good synopsis by the way......it's almost like you are in the business!

GRM readers are getting wealthier because they're not paying Mercedes 53 grand for an engine R&R.

The media kits don't use standardized metrics, but from the shiny new ones Joe just sent me, GRM readers are more male and in similar demographic groups to Monterey attendees. I suspect there are some 1% outliers in the latter, but the GRM group lines up with the Monterey group fairly well as long as you figure that some of them brought their SOs to the event.

Hey Everybody,

Just thought I'd zombie this thread because Hemmings has decided to include HS&E content in Hemmings Classic.  They heard from enough readers of HS&E over the last couple of years to include stories on them thar strange furrin' vehicles.  The April issue (out now) has stories on the 1933 MG J2 and a 1971 Saab 96 V4.  Of course the main cover story is "Dart vs Valiant" but it's a start.  If they hear from enough folks about interest in these stories, perhaps we'll see more coverage.

In reply to Jerry From LA :

I was talking to them at their booth at the A-C auto auction last month. The amount of push-back they have received from the "Merica-only" crowd has been substantial.  He wasn't happy about the loss either. At those events they are still expected to push the same amount of magazines overall with one less choice.  Definitely a loss in my case as I would often do my renewal there. I didn't this year.

They'll continue if they see a net gain in readership.  Problem is, you and I and maybe three other people below the age of 147 even noticed.  They took a long time to realize perhaps they treated HS&E like the proverbial red-headed stepchild.  The time for resurrection may be gone.  Or it's too little too late.  Or they stick with it awhile and see if the numbers tick up.  Right now, the Foreign Invasion is two articles in the back of the mag.  Who knows?