BelleSerene
Well-Known Member
There are some excellent observations in other posters’ comments here. Trying not to repeat points already made, here’s my £0.02 worth as a loyal YM reader (currently paper and digital subscriber) for 20+ years.
From where Yachting Monthly has found itself today, the magazine strongly needs to sort out its contributing team.
Reading the magazine down the ages shows clear dumbing down in each decade. I recently looked through some bound editions in a club library from the inter-war period. Reading YM today, from my younger days (I’m 50) and then from that period was like comparing school exam papers from our kids’ GCSEs, from ‘O’ levels of my youth and before, and from our parents’ CSEs. And the difference is not just in the depth of the subject matter: it’s also in the genuine saltiness of the writers’ experiences and reflections. There is space for something more thoughtful than much of our recent content has been – and for non-basic material expressed well; it seems to me that that would be a unique and defensible position in the yachting magazine market.
In terms of commercial viability:
• The market for written media has declined, the economy isn’t in yachting boom phase, and everyone expects to get news, comment and views online at a low price, if not free. So it’s going to be a tough time for all the boating magazines, and not all may survive.
• A merger with PBO strikes me as a risky fit. First, it would slam engineering (doing things to boats) together with sailing (doing things in boats) - and I write as an lapsed engineer myself – and second, it would be trying to compete for motorboaters who are already well served by dedicated magazines.
• A sale to, or buyout of, the competing ST would be a better fit but may not suit shareholder interests.
• But either way, you have to select one strategy (define a niche and stick to it/ define a joint and defensible readership with PBO/ ditto with ST), modify the editorial theme accordingly and stick to it. Undifferentiated players will die.
• The same self-confidence in editorial content needs to be applied to boat and kit reviews. Honesty, frankness and independence gain respect and are worth reading, boosting sales which advertisers will pay for. Pandering to today’s advertisers by a review policy that flatters everything in sight is self-defeating.
What an opportunity. Really good luck.
YM’s brand and values have always seemed to me quite different from PBO and Sailing Today. At its best, it’s been the thinking person’s yachting magazine. It’s been about the experience of sailing and the enjoyment of sailing, and a relaxed, self-confident attitude to being a sailing enthusiast has breezed out of its pages.
PBO which is more about how to build a small boat or tinker with your boat (I do a lot but only exceptionally why I buy magazines, compared with YM’s experience and enjoyment of sailing itself, and more venturing further afield.
YM is much more about cruising than racing. Yachts & Yachting covers the racing schene for dinghies & keelboats, as does YW for big boats and for aspirational megaboat owners.
ST has always seemed to me to be unconfident beginner’s shiny guide; a ‘How to use your Apple Mac’ magazine for boat owners or occasional sailors. But in recent months it has raised its game, perhaps both benefiting from and contributing to YM’s decline. After Tom Cunliffe after he left YM for Time Inc’s self-defeating policy of not allowing contributors to retain copyright of their articles, it cunningly recruited him – and how it boasts of its new daddy! The best of the marine writers, Tom has modified his topic matter, if not his inimitably engaging and florid style, to suit ST readers; but ST’s gain is certainly YM’s loss. ST has also shifted to more of a loadsamoney presumed readership (which I don’t believe will pay in today’s market) and has succumbed to some pretty dodgy and uninformed product selection.
Yachting World, to my eye, is curiously about aspirational stuff, appealing both to those dreaming of (and the few owning) megayachts and to bragging, alpha-male race crew who buy the latest kit and race in other people’s boats.
PBO which is more about how to build a small boat or tinker with your boat (I do a lot but only exceptionally why I buy magazines, compared with YM’s experience and enjoyment of sailing itself, and more venturing further afield.
YM is much more about cruising than racing. Yachts & Yachting covers the racing schene for dinghies & keelboats, as does YW for big boats and for aspirational megaboat owners.
ST has always seemed to me to be unconfident beginner’s shiny guide; a ‘How to use your Apple Mac’ magazine for boat owners or occasional sailors. But in recent months it has raised its game, perhaps both benefiting from and contributing to YM’s decline. After Tom Cunliffe after he left YM for Time Inc’s self-defeating policy of not allowing contributors to retain copyright of their articles, it cunningly recruited him – and how it boasts of its new daddy! The best of the marine writers, Tom has modified his topic matter, if not his inimitably engaging and florid style, to suit ST readers; but ST’s gain is certainly YM’s loss. ST has also shifted to more of a loadsamoney presumed readership (which I don’t believe will pay in today’s market) and has succumbed to some pretty dodgy and uninformed product selection.
Yachting World, to my eye, is curiously about aspirational stuff, appealing both to those dreaming of (and the few owning) megayachts and to bragging, alpha-male race crew who buy the latest kit and race in other people’s boats.
From where Yachting Monthly has found itself today, the magazine strongly needs to sort out its contributing team.
YM has lost some of its strongest players in recent months. It needs to recruit 1-3 quality regular column writers to reset the theme of competence, reasonably in-depth subject matter, genuine authority on marine matters, and a writing style that’s worth reading. Re-recruit Tom if at all possible. And Libby Purves too. We really need people who both have heavyweight experience and views to share, and can write excellently.
The technical (eg engineering/ materials) specialist who can also write is a rare beast. Regretfully, losing the third opinion piece after Tom and Libby was a positive move IMHO: the subject matter was fine, but too often it lacked an interesting angle and compared with the refreshing humanity of the above writers, boy was it dry.
Readers’ cruise stories usually come across for what they have been: padding in lieu of real content. Recent issues have suffered from more of this padding. Outstanding tales or real adventures can make worthwhile reading, but not just ‘I navigated from Dartmouth to Chichester’ or ‘I chartered a yacht in the Baltic’.
The technical (eg engineering/ materials) specialist who can also write is a rare beast. Regretfully, losing the third opinion piece after Tom and Libby was a positive move IMHO: the subject matter was fine, but too often it lacked an interesting angle and compared with the refreshing humanity of the above writers, boy was it dry.
Readers’ cruise stories usually come across for what they have been: padding in lieu of real content. Recent issues have suffered from more of this padding. Outstanding tales or real adventures can make worthwhile reading, but not just ‘I navigated from Dartmouth to Chichester’ or ‘I chartered a yacht in the Baltic’.
Reading the magazine down the ages shows clear dumbing down in each decade. I recently looked through some bound editions in a club library from the inter-war period. Reading YM today, from my younger days (I’m 50) and then from that period was like comparing school exam papers from our kids’ GCSEs, from ‘O’ levels of my youth and before, and from our parents’ CSEs. And the difference is not just in the depth of the subject matter: it’s also in the genuine saltiness of the writers’ experiences and reflections. There is space for something more thoughtful than much of our recent content has been – and for non-basic material expressed well; it seems to me that that would be a unique and defensible position in the yachting magazine market.
In terms of commercial viability:
• The market for written media has declined, the economy isn’t in yachting boom phase, and everyone expects to get news, comment and views online at a low price, if not free. So it’s going to be a tough time for all the boating magazines, and not all may survive.
• A merger with PBO strikes me as a risky fit. First, it would slam engineering (doing things to boats) together with sailing (doing things in boats) - and I write as an lapsed engineer myself – and second, it would be trying to compete for motorboaters who are already well served by dedicated magazines.
• A sale to, or buyout of, the competing ST would be a better fit but may not suit shareholder interests.
• But either way, you have to select one strategy (define a niche and stick to it/ define a joint and defensible readership with PBO/ ditto with ST), modify the editorial theme accordingly and stick to it. Undifferentiated players will die.
• The same self-confidence in editorial content needs to be applied to boat and kit reviews. Honesty, frankness and independence gain respect and are worth reading, boosting sales which advertisers will pay for. Pandering to today’s advertisers by a review policy that flatters everything in sight is self-defeating.
What an opportunity. Really good luck.
)) - to make the magazines as good as they can be. We care hugely about getting this right.
