Hi-Fi News / extracts from non-confidential recent dialogue:

[Neil McCauley]

Overview:

Some of you might (once again) like a glimpse into what goes on behind the scenes. Also it offers a useful insight into how end-users (and presumably the typical AoS reader) is viewed by the ‘suits’. If not, then please disregard.

Thank you.

Howard

Incoming from Hi-Fi News 23/8/11:

Hello,

I have an offer for a full page in the next issue of Hi-Fi News. This is the November issue, and goes on sale 16th September. Copy for this is due Tuesday 30th August.

You haven’t advertised in our magazine for a while now, and are continually missing out on potential customers by doing so. Hi-Fi News is the longest-running audio magazine on the market and has the highest verified circulation in the high-end hi-fi magazine market. What are the potential implications to your business if your competitors continue to gain custom that you have no chance of getting currently? I assume you are still looking to increase your profits and margins in this area of the trade and still wish to be a market leader?

There are simple ways businesses have looked to improve revenue streams over the course of 2011 - maximise profits or cut costs. One will not automatically happen just because the other is addressed, and if you are going to cut costs you need to invest in marketing.

Our readers’ average age is: As of 15.44 on 23/8/11 I have happily agreed at the request of senior management at the HFN publishers to delete the previous data.

The single page is priced at just £ As of 15.44 on 23/8/11 I have happily agreed at the request of senior management at the HFN publishers to delete the previous data.

Thank you,

My response 23/8/11:

Thank you. I’ll consider it only when your editor stops displaying utter contempt for retailers. Simple as that. Until that unrealistic day I’ll pour my surplus money into online advertising rather than funding another man’s ego trip i.e. your Editor’s.

Sincerely

Howard Popeck

Back story:

Retailers rarely if ever get editorial coverage. I can't remember the last time I saw such coverage for any retailer.

Hi-Fi News and HFW both point blank refuse to publish any press releases from retailers. They’ll only publish releases from ‘high-value’ importers, distributors and makers. Insiders indicate that the editorial view is that retailers represent the ‘shoddy’ end of the market (little better than Arthur Daley) and while retailer advertising revenue is welcomed, any news about them or from them is ‘beneath them’ and therefore unwelcome.

Not only this by advertising in Hi-Fi News is in my direct personal experience utterly un-commercial in that the same ad on my blog and site has a cost of sale per item sold of just 9.7% of the Hi-Fi News discounted display page cost.

And as for supporting the moribund UK audiophile press – well that’s just not my problem. After all, they have zero interest in the challenges facing retailing in today's market nor supporting that market! Why should I give a stuff about their survival when there are viable low-cost alternatives?

Epilogue / Moral:

This will fall on deaf ears of course, but from my perspective the message to the remaining mags is this. The golden rule in an industry recession is this; "the man with the gold makes the rules!"

Update 17.47

I've just finished an interesting and cordial conversation with a senior figure at the Publishers. I received a call from them. Thus I feel obliged to admit that my scepticism re a response to my statement above re "deaf ears" has been confounded rather than compounded. In this respect, I'm impressed. This person listened to my grievances re lack of editorial support for retailers. No guarantees were offered and none sought. They did at least listen.



*************************************

[colinB]

I think thats a very good point. Why dont mags do retailer features. Some music mags do features on record shops. I might find them more approachable with a human face.

[Neil McCauley]

I think thats a very good point. Why dont mags do retailer features. Some music mags do features on record shops. I might find them more approachable with a human face.

Because editorial, indeed like some people on some forums perceive retailers as being disreputable, beneath contempt, a hurdle between the end-user and the glory of musical reproduction in the home - and more.

Moreover there are few makers / importers with big budgets these days and the editors / publishers can't afford to piss them off. Retailers though have comparatively tiny budgets and are expendable. And then there's this ...

Without fawning to the makers / importers, they'll be a shortage of gear to review. That's why for example and in my opinion NAIM (as one illustration) never get poor or "good, but ...." reviews. In comparison, other than money, what's a dealer got that's of interest to an Editor? If Linn issued a press release that they'd invented a lawn mower that played digital downloads, the mags would publish the press release and probably start writing the review before they'd even seen the product let alone applied it to a lawn!

In contrast, if a retailer had the bare-faced cheek to issue a release commenting on (say) a power chord where the screw terminals at the IEC end were so loose that when a user pulled the cord instead of a plug that user was left with a fist-full of bare live wires, there's NO WAY the editors would publish this even if it were a general warning (without mentioning brands) that everyone should from time to time remove the cord and check the tightness of the terminations in all non-moulded IEC plugs! Why? Because they are self-serving cowards in my view.

Actually, retailers have quite a lot to offer. But none of that's of interest to the Editors despite being of interest to the readers. Information that in no way could a magazine discover for itself or to the benefit of its readers. They just don't care enough. Please judge for yourself from the following 4 of many examples:


Commenting on inconsistency between batches.
Variation between the sound of the review sample and what the end-users gets offered
Percentage unreliability within a brand
Comparative unreliability between brands.

Sincerely

Howard


***************************************

[griffo104]

Thanks for sharing that little conversation.

I think the first thing that came to me was the tone of the sale, as if you have no idea how to advertise or that you are getting beaten by your competitors who do advertise in that mag, they of course want to increase their profits and margins.

The whole tone is dismissive of you as a person running a business, and I would guess you are very aware of the impact of advertising and where you wish to advertise ????

A while ago HIFI+ used to do articles on dealers putting a system together and I always found them interesting and enjoyed reading the philosophy of the retailer in question - especially if the retalier also decided to distribute certain gear or even went as far as to manufacture and sell their own cables, etc.. This does seem to have disappeared from the printed press a little recently.

I had a very good relationship with two dealers - both Linn and both who helped me put my then system together. The system I have in Southend was also put together with the help of a local dealer (not Linn).

I do think the internet has had an impact on how dealers are viewed, some people tend to trust people's opinions without them actually having experience or knowledge and that's highlighted by cliques around certain forums.

I think the magazines inferring that without them you are selling yourself short shows a little lack of imagination on what forms of advertising are now available to a small business.

[Alan Sircom]

To be perfectly honest, that's fairly timid for ad-sales patter, it's just a bit hard-sell from the usual specialist perspective. I've worked in some environments with ad teams that sound more like Scarface when they sell; I know one guy on MI who sent out renewal mailshots looking like a ransom note covered in bloodstains, saying "Why are you killing me? Signed Your Business!".


But, hey... thanks for the free espionage!

-

I do try to work with dealers wherever possible. It's not always possible. There is a bit of a general misunderstanding about the time gap between going to press and when the magazine prints that I've never fully been able to get across to dealers having open days. For instance, the next issue of the magazine was mailed to subscribers the end of last week and will be in the shops the end of this week. We turn this round relatively quickly, but the news pages for this issue were closed about three weeks ago. So, when I get a news piece about an dealer's open day, if it had any chance of going in the magazine, it needs to be sent out at least a month before the event takes place.

Not the week before. Those who have learned this get their events featured. Those who haven't, don't. It's as simple as that.

We have had to largely stop running features about dealers building systems, primarily because there are perhaps a dozen country-wide that would put together a system that wasn't a cookie-cutter system from a group of like-minded manufacturers, the sole output of a single distributor or made up of last year's award winners from a rival magazine. I ran this kind of feature for nearly five years in HFC toward the end of the 1990s - we stopped it after the sixth dealer in a row put together the same Marantz CD player, Cyrus amplifier and Monitor Audio speaker package and when asked for something different, they all swapped the Marantz for an Arcam, the Cyrus for a Musical Fidelity and the Monitor Audios for a pair of B&Ws. Six years later, when I came back to HFC as a freelance writer, we started the same scheme up again, and the first system was a Marantz CD player, Cyrus amp and Monitor Audio speakers. As was the second. Only the model numbers had changed.

If a dealer commented on shoddy workmanship in products, there is no way on this planet we would print something until it was thoroughly corroborated. Here's why:

1. We get sued.
2. See 1

Suggesting an IEC socket is defective in a product steps far outside the realm of 'fair comment' and exposes the magazine to legal action. Remember that newspapers can get away with printing unsubstantiated claims about celebrities because they have deep pockets, but even they shied away from calling out Beko over its fridge freezers for months, despite someone possibly dying in the intervening period.

If you get it wrong, you are in a world of hurt. It's not much better if you get it right. The interesting part is if these IEC sockets were shown to be defective, the manufacturer could still sue. They could argue that the defective part was bought by the company in good faith, that the failure was not detectable on inspection and that claiming the manufacturer did knowingly use defective parts in the manufacture of its products was defamatory, because it would both cause the manufacturer to lose business and would make a reasonable person think less of the company as a result.

Even if the manufacturer were bang to rights, they could get away with delaying the publication of any comment about this by claiming that the design was a trade secret and slap and injunction on the magazine. Been there, done that.

[Neil McCauley]

To be perfectly honest, that's fairly timid for ad-sales patter, it's just a bit hard-sell from the usual specialist perspective. I've worked in some environments with ad teams that sound more like Scarface when they sell; I know one guy on MI who sent out renewal mailshots looking like a ransom note covered in bloodstains, saying "Why are you killing me? Signed Your Business!".


But, hey... thanks for the free espionage!

-

I do try to work with dealers wherever possible. It's not always possible. There is a bit of a general misunderstanding about the time gap between going to press and when the magazine prints that I've never fully been able to get across to dealers having open days. For instance, the next issue of the magazine was mailed to subscribers the end of last week and will be in the shops the end of this week. We turn this round relatively quickly, but the news pages for this issue were closed about three weeks ago. So, when I get a news piece about an dealer's open day, if it had any chance of going in the magazine, it needs to be sent out at least a month before the event takes place.

Not the week before. Those who have learned this get their events featured. Those who haven't, don't. It's as simple as that.

We have had to largely stop running features about dealers building systems, primarily because there are perhaps a dozen country-wide that would put together a system that wasn't a cookie-cutter system from a group of like-minded manufacturers, the sole output of a single distributor or made up of last year's award winners from a rival magazine. I ran this kind of feature for nearly five years in HFC toward the end of the 1990s - we stopped it after the sixth dealer in a row put together the same Marantz CD player, Cyrus amplifier and Monitor Audio speaker package and when asked for something different, they all swapped the Marantz for an Arcam, the Cyrus for a Musical Fidelity and the Monitor Audios for a pair of B&Ws. Six years later, when I came back to HFC as a freelance writer, we started the same scheme up again, and the first system was a Marantz CD player, Cyrus amp and Monitor Audio speakers. As was the second. Only the model numbers had changed.

If a dealer commented on shoddy workmanship in products, there is no way on this planet we would print something until it was thoroughly corroborated. Here's why:

1. We get sued.
2. See 1

Suggesting an IEC socket is defective in a product steps far outside the realm of 'fair comment' and exposes the magazine to legal action. Remember that newspapers can get away with printing unsubstantiated claims about celebrities because they have deep pockets, but even they shied away from calling out Beko over its fridge freezers for months, despite someone possibly dying in the intervening period.

If you get it wrong, you are in a world of hurt. It's not much better if you get it right. The interesting part is if these IEC sockets were shown to be defective, the manufacturer could still sue. They could argue that the defective part was bought by the company in good faith, that the failure was not detectable on inspection and that claiming the manufacturer did knowingly use defective parts in the manufacture of its products was defamatory, because it would both cause the manufacturer to lose business and would make a reasonable person think less of the company as a result.

Even if the manufacturer were bang to rights, they could get away with delaying the publication of any comment about this by claiming that the design was a trade secret and slap and injunction on the magazine. Been there, done that.

Interesting. So just 4 words of response from me; 'not much hope then?'

Regards

Howard


*************************************************

[Neil McCauley]

I do try to work with dealers wherever possible. It's not always possible.

But what are your views on this extract from the thread-starter Alan?

Actually, retailers have quite a lot to offer. But none of that's of interest to the Editors despite being of interest to the readers. Information that in no way could a magazine discover for itself or to the benefit of its readers. They just don't care enough. Please judge for yourself from the following 4 of many examples:

Commenting on inconsistency between batches.
Variation between the sound of the review sample and what the end-users gets offered
Percentage unreliability within a brand
Comparative unreliability between brands.


Thanks

Howard


***************************************

[Alan Sircom]

But what are your views on this extract from the thread-starter Alan?

Actually, retailers have quite a lot to offer. But none of that's of interest to the Editors despite being of interest to the readers. Information that in no way could a magazine discover for itself or to the benefit of its readers. They just don't care enough. Please judge for yourself from the following 4 of many examples:

Commenting on inconsistency between batches.
Variation between the sound of the review sample and what the end-users gets offered
Percentage unreliability within a brand
Comparative unreliability between brands.



Thanks

Howard


***************************************

I usually ask for an off-the-line sample instead of one of the first runs. Which is why we don't get exclusives like many of the other magazines and consequently part of the reason we bring up the rear in terms of circulation.

If we went after more first reviews, we'd have more to shout about and the circulation would rise. We'd also end up testing a lot of products with a serial number of '00001'. Unfortunately, it seems people want to read the scoop review rather than know what the real ones from the production line sound like.

In fairness though, this is old news. The days of certain companies making a £2000 review sample of a £200 product were pretty much history by the time I started writing 20 years ago, and it gets even harder now that products are being built in the Far East. The unscrupulous might be able to tweak a product on the factory floor, but doing the same half a world away is more difficult. If anything, the current state of the art means the second batch is better than the first, as the production control begins to take hold.

Remember that there are a couple of companies that improved their quality control by not being built in the UK, if only because the boss can't randomly cut the component cost in half on a whim.

[colinB]

As cynical as i can be i have to say i was surprised a few years back when Arcam put one of their FMJ products through for review to WHF. It only recieved 3 stars. In reply arcam stated it was a faulty unit but the review stuck.
I even thought it a bit harsh to be honest.

[Alan Sircom]

As cynical as i can be i have to say i was surprised a few years back when Arcam put one of their FMJ products through for review to WHF. It only recieved 3 stars. In reply arcam stated it was a faulty unit but the review stuck.
I even thought it a bit harsh to be honest.

That's kind of indicative of things, probably more so that heavily customised versions of standard devices these days. When I used to work for more scoop-hungry magazines, I'd say about once every three months or so we'd be sent a non-working photo sample to review.

I'm not saying the hot-rodded sample is impossible to come by, but for every 'breathed on' review special we get, we must get 10 'Friday cars'. That probably says more for QC, but if you are getting the first one out of the factory, you sometimes feel like a beta tester as much as a reviewer.

[colinB]

Im shocked QC can be so poor with relatively short runs of components.
You expect it with high volume mass market gear from Asia but nor small companys.