Magazine Death Pool

Submitted For Your Approval: The whole PC computer magazine category

Media journalists are so infatuated by the up and downs glamorous magazines that they forget about the once hot category of computer magazines.

The days of ad-thick computer magazines are long gone. Several have fallen along the way, but a few die-hards are staggering around. They've shifted their focus to business and consumer electronics to stay alive (PC World) or recently announced frequency cutbacks (PC Magazine).

The Reaper believes these magazines are racing a clock which is inevitably going to run out. I'm going to have to load my boat with laptops, and you know how heavy they are. Consumers who want to fix their PC's, find the hottest software, made aware of the latest virus and scams, and best and worst shopping experiences can find it all online at... the magazine's own web sites, other web-only properties, The Consumerist and Jeff Jarvis' BuzzMachine blog.

The Reaper foresee the remaining PC magazines going the way of Infoworld and moving to a 100% web platform and abandoning ink on paper. Those days are gone. The web is made for geeks and tech owners.

So I'm laying down good odds right now that at least one of the remaining PC magazines (PC World, PC Magazine, and Computer Shopper) will have its motherboard fried by the end of 2008.

Hell's Bells: they're starting to ring a little more for Portfolio

According to today's WWD, in some not surprising news at all, it was revealed that Portfolio magazine is selling through 15%-18% of its newsstand copies. That's several percentage points lower than what would be considered "respectable."

The article also cites that the magazine has 300,000 subscribers and that most business magazines are subscription-driven. Yes, but where do those subscriptions come from and how much did people pay for them, asks the Reaper? A large amount of them must come from starter offers which come cheap, mostly through an expensive direct mail campaign. The other point to keep in mind is how long are these people going to stay subscribers? Their cheap subscription deal is over by next spring, so it's time to pony up more bucks to renew. That will be one of the biggest crossroads that Portfolio will face, will current readers like it enough to subscribe again?

The Reaper has often stated that Portfolio will follow in Cargo's footsteps and drop right down here in the permanent underground parking lot. It won't happen right away, but it will happen over the next 16-18 months, when the readership is a stack of cards and advertisers abandon ship. David Carey can boast all he wants about ad pages now while he's under Si Newhouse's golden glow, but the magic will not be there in the long run.

Two more magazines take a dirtnap

I'm starting to sound like the Jim Cramer of Magazine Death.

I'm still putting my money on Hachette's Sound & Vision kicking the bucket, but another high-end audio publication as beaten them to the punch. The Perfect Vision, devoted to all the hi-def stuff you have been splurging on the past couple of years at Christmas, has published its last print edition.

The publisher announced they merging The Perfect Vision with their "music and audio digital publication" Playback. This is a sign of things to come, so take it from the Reaper, don't take out any long-term subscriptions to Sound & Vision because they'll end up sending you issues of Car & Driver after it folds.

Then in the beautiful state of Arizona, Item magazine was sent to a much less sunnier environment. The bi-monthly magazine that focused on the "good life" in Scottsdale, LA and Las Vegas was shut down by the parent company, now get this name, Media That Deelivers. No, that was not a typo. That's three e's in that word. If you type in www.itemmagazine.net, you get sent directly to the flagship title Arizona Foothills magazine web site.

Do you get a feeling there's a glut in the luxury city-focused magazine field? Whatever happened to Ocean Drive's Chicago magazine that was supposed to launch in December? Was there a reason they merged with Jason Binn's Niche Media? Perhaps the writing is on the wall for this category? The Reaper will be watching.