Surfer magazine

I'm going to go with a combination of the two.

 

There has been a noticable decline in quality for the past few years and an increasing amount of political BS in their pages. If not for a subscription being included with ESA membership I would have dropped it long ago.

 

I think both of them works best together.

 

Print is dead. I think the political stuff was thrown in there because they knew the end was very near.

Actually surprised they made it this long.

 

I have no more mag subscriptions. I let them all expire and didn't renew. Not because print is dead, or political BS, but because after 40+ years of reading them they got kinda redundant.

 

ended my subscription after some cool dude got me a subscription to surfer's journal and i realized i was just paying for ads with Surfer. the next year i opted to pay the much higher price, but with much better and higher quality content with the Journal...and about 1/10 the ads.

 

What are the returns on that type of print advertising? I assume that the hit rate is tracked with unique codes or phone numbers or something. When I ran IT for a east coast regional pest control company, I was astounded at how low the hit rate was and it was still considered viable advertising. Took some effort to change their thinking on digital advertising. They still had some HUGE budget for Yellow Page ads and this was like 2010.

 

TSJ is the best out there... I like their art features.

 

I'm so glad I got to experience and appreciate print media before it's demise.

Growing up I had subs to the top car magazines: Motor Trend, Road and Track, Car and Driver, Car Craft, and Hotrod. My parents owned a body shop for 40 years so we got them all. I think they were for the waiting room but I scooped them up right out of the mailbox and took them home. Then there was that time I pulled the mag with the black plastic cover out of the mailbox and tore into it.... but that's a story for another thread.

I'll never forget an article in Motor Trend about the Trust SSC (super-sonic car) that broke the sound barrier. I read that article dozens of times and poured over the pictures. I was never a great student but always at the top of my class for reading and vocab, and I attribute it to those mags back in the day.

Now I have one sub left, to Grassroot's Motorsports Magazine out of Florida. Revenue is so low that subscribers and forum members buy ads so they can keep printing it. I just love the feeling of the printed page. I love being in the car with my wife driving and I'm reading a magazine. No pop-ups, no auto play, no comments section, no algorithms. Just words and pictures. I read that mag front to back every month, even the ads.

 

Yes, redemption rate. I think we were in the neighborhood of .5% or something. I guess since you are sending free money, it should be considerably higher.

Also, I'd say that the tangible mail is for more like the 60+ crowd (I'm 52).

 

I, too, was a big time reader as a kid. Periodicals and books. I used to go to the library and bring home 4 books, read them over two weeks and then repeat the process. I read a ton of Science Fiction. I also would devour Sports Illustrated from cover to cover. The one article that I most remember was "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch". It was published in the April 1st edition in 1985. A fascinating yarn written by George Plimpton, it captivated the sports world. If you are not familiar with the story, I highly recommend that you read it and then read about it. That's the type of thing that could never happen in today's always connected world.

 

Remember cutting pictures out of magazines and hanging them in your locker... or your room? And those pull-out posters?

 

Man, I almost forgot I had a subscription to SI for more than a decade. I was such a huge sports fan back then. I think the era that stands out the most for me was the steroid scandal in baseball. All my heroes, especially Barry Bond getting busted. I was a B.B. fan from back in the Pirates days. I thought he was so cool, then he broke the home run record which elevated him to god status. Then it came out that he was cheating, I mean, he looked like a ****ing freak towards the end. This was one of major things that caused me to drift away from sports in general. That, and the Mike Vick dogfighting thing. Talking heads who defended his actions disgusted me to the point of walking away from SI and SportsCenter for good.

 

Yes! This and the demo discs that came with the video game mags in the late 90's, and the cheat codes in the back of Tip's and Tricks Magazine. As a frame of reference, I'm 32.

 

Magazines were a huge cultural influence on me. I saved a lot of my pre teen and teen money for magazines. Heavy Metal (the graphic magazine) Mad, Cracked, Conan, National Lampoon, Soldier Of Fortune, Hot Rod, Dirt Bike, Thrasher (and I suck skating). Hell, I remember my buddys older brother throwing out a stack of Easy Rider when I was 10 and we read every one cover to cover. As a teen stoner I found High Times, and on and on.

I did have a have a subscription to Surfer and Surfing a little over a decade ago, I let them slide, they definitely cater to a younger demographic for the most part. I still feel kind of sad Surfer is going, like most other print magazines, reading on my computer or a kindle does not compare to that excitement Id get bringing home a new mag.

 

Wow. What a trip. I also had subscriptions to Surfing Magazine, Bodyboarding Magazine and Mad Magazine (fold the back cover together to solve the puzzle!). I was really into Spy vs Spy. Had a few of those books too. As an adult I also had a subscription to Running Times until they got bought my Running Magazine, which caters to the hobby jogger and not the serious runner (which I was at the time).