Recently the item The decline of ham radio magazines appeared on /r/amateurradio. The OP (original poster) wrote:
Over the last several years it has become impossible to purchase ham radio magazines in the local book store. National chains or local mom and pop shops, it does not matter. Talking with the managers brings black hole stares to rival the students in Ferris Bueller’s classroom. Yet model railroad magazines are overflowing the shelves. So I ask, how many model railroaders are there? A few quick searches pulled up the magazine MRH model railroad hobbyist. It has a circulation of 30,000. Additionally there is a national organization the NMRA national model railroad association. It has a membership of about 18,000.
By contrast there are about 800,000 hams in the US and 154,000 of those are ARRL members. A person would think we would have several magazines available. I will concede the internet provides much of the content magazines used to. Yet there are many model railroad magazine still on the shelf.
I’m curious for everyone’s thoughts on this.
I replied something to the effect that the print magazine business is a dead-end affair. Association magazines, such as QST, may continue to be published, but that’s only because the association’s dues help fund the magazine. Consumer magazines that rely on advertising are finding it harder and harder to keep their heads above water because companies that used to be advertisers are finding other ways to reach their customers.
If making money by producing a print magazine is tough, you can imagine how hard it is to make any money on newsstand sales. To make any money on newsstand sales, the prices have to be so high as to make them unattractive to casual buyers. Who wants to spend $10 on something that may or may not interest them, especially when free information on nearly any topic is available on the internet? I used to buy a lot of magazines from newsstands, but I can’t remember the last time that I did so.
I think the reason that there are only two amateur radio magazines, including one that’s in an increasingly iffy business situation, is that there really isn’t much that a magazine can provide that can’t already be found on the internet. Blogs and podcasts, including mine (blog, podcast) provide technical articles, construction projects, and news, and do so in a much more timely fashion than print magazines. In fact, I like to consider this blog as a kind of amateur radio magazine.
All of this doesn’t answer the OP’s question about model railroad magazines, but I’m afraid that I don’t know enough about that subculture. Maybe it’s because model railroading is more visual that amateur radio. That’s only a wild-a** guess, though.
ON5ZO says
“there really isn’t much that a magazine can provide that can’t already be found on the internet”
Exactly TRUE and that is why I dropped my QST subscription a/k/a ARRL membership.
After sixteen years it felt that 50% was of no interest to me and the other 50% was either old news or seemed like a ‘déjà vu’ from a decade earlier.
Not bashing the QST staff though, they do a great job and it’s not easy pleasing a tough crowd like us.
In 2000-2001 and probably before there was a glossy French version of CQ magazine (if I recall that well, I’m pretty sure it was CQ) in the newspaper stores in the Brussels area as well as in France. I haven’t found that since the mid 2000’s.
I like reading paper though, it’s just that for our hobby it’s too slow and hard to find content.
73 from Belgium
Franki ON5ZO
Lloyd Colston says
I agree with your assessment of QST and the assessment that the League staff does good work.
The League membership supports the Staff effort to support #hamradio.
QST is important but the rest of the effort, alone, is worth the membership.
73
Fred Becchetti says
Yes..as was indicated, model RR, as well as model airplanes,
wood working, hot rodding, knitting, and similar hobbies are highly visual, DIY orientated
hence magazines dedicated to those are picture and DIY intensive..
In the old days when radios often hand built, project pictures, circuit diagrams were useful hence several magazines available ..but today less so ..and for the few (of the 800,000 amateurs) still building radios ARRL publications, incl. dedicated books, and Internet suffice.
Pat says
One thought…. Both are legacy hobbies that have been around for a loooong time. Hams tend to be more tech savvy, thus more likely to be comfortable with on line resources.
Rory Sena says
Ok, I’ll create some QRM, the reason I think and like magazines is that the data is consolidated, one doesn’t need to chase all over the interwebs looking for information, yes more is out there but you have to have access to the net. Magazines also are more portable than the internet. As far as the costs compared to planes, trains, and automobiles I see those are at a less page count.
Brian Stockham says
Dan, I don’t have any answers to your question regarding the lack of more magazines about ham radio, but I can say that I definitely miss “73” magazine. It was full of good content and I even enjoyed the occasional rants. Too bad it wasn’t a surviivor!
Dave New, N8SBE says
Having been a model RR’er for a while a long while back, I recall the draw of the magazines was the gorgeous photography of various folks’ model RR layouts and other projects like ‘antiquing’ rolling stock to make it look realistic.
These days, with a billion images taken a day worldwide, I’d think that any online curated collection of model RR photography would attract similar attention. Who knows?
As for amateur radio magazines, I was dismayed that the QCWA stopped printing almost to the month I decided to get a life subscription. I just don’t seem to find the time or place to read the only version these days. For a while, they ran a contest, where they would give away a handheld or similar to a random drawing of all the folks that found a particular phrase embedded someplace in the electronic copy. They even went to the trouble of making it graphical, so you couldn’t just use the PDF search function to find it. I actually thought it fun, and faithfully looked through each issue. Then they dropped it (maybe not enough money to keep giving away nice prizes?).
QST suffers from the ‘in depth’ virus. That is, every time I find an article with some meat in it, it gets chopped short and the schematics, etc. are all to be found on the ‘in depth’ web page on the ARRL site. Somehow, I never get around to looking that stuff up.
ARRL has also placed video links to certain content, most notably some product reviews, in the online version. Even though I’ve sometimes been viewing the online QST on my tablet, which I got specifically for reading online magazines (so far, I’ve only viewed QST, so it was a pricey option for as little as I’ve used it for the original purpose I bought it for), since it comes out before the print edition comes to my mailbox, I’ve seldom wanted to interrupt my reading with clicking on a link that takes me out of the page context to view. It would be better if they actually embedded the content IN the page. This is the 21st century (I think).
David says
Out of sight, out of mind. Gun magazines will be next.
EuGene C Smith says
I have been off the air for about 25 years, and just now am getting back into ham radio. Wow! Lots of new stuff going on, that’s for sure. I was really surprised to find CQ and 73 magazines missing from the newsstands, but I can see how they suffered from the loss of advertisers as those folks have gone online with their product pitches.
Even our print newspapers are beginning to die off as they, too, go online and subscribers get an e-reader to device with their subscription.
I miss the magazines, however (am I a ham radio Luddite?), but suppose I need to forget the past and start reading the on-line magazines,,,er,,,blogs.
EuGene, KA5NLY
Cat Smith says
Japanese ham radio magazines are a fantastic example of what a good monthly can be like. They are a bit smaller in size and the back 50% of the magazine is full of ads, but there are articles aplenty in them every month. The difference is that most japanese hams like to read paper magazines — they trade newspaper for toilet paper in most cities there — so it’s sort of a reverse investment…
In any event, I’ve seen British, Australian and Japanese amateur radio magazines and they all pale compared to what the Japanese have to offer — very technical, but light hearted for the most part. Even if you can’t read the language, the pictures and schematics are well worth a look. I would recommend them.
I will say too, that Japanese hams are some of the most skilled operators I’ve met so far. Their homebrew skills are pretty good and some of them are displayed on the internet for all to see. Their communities in general are more hooked into ham radio as well. They are well aware of what those people are doing so their status is a little more prominent because of their skill sets.
If there are ham radio enthusiast software developers out there now might be the time to start producing an online ham radio magazine. I’ve thought about it a few times, but I would have to have some friends with Skype capability to do such a thing. Who knows, perhaps you could build a global version of a really good monthly magazine — being worldwide in English and perhaps in other languages would make it really interesting…
Coincidentally, I think this is exactly where ARRL fails. They’ve got the capability, they just aren’t using it to take QST into the free realm of the internet. If they could get advertisers interested they’d have one hell of a free internet based magazine…my recommendation: base it on what the Japanese are doing on paper and I think they’d have something really cool ! :”>