TEN Publishing

[RitcheyRch]

Today is a day we’ve all dreaded. With the exception of Motor Trend, Hot Rod, and Four Wheeler, TEN Publishing will cease the print products of its magazine brands. These titles will continue as web sites and social media accounts, and major investments are being made in digital, so the editors may keep their jobs to continue with that content. As a lifelong fan of print who made his career as a magazine editor, this is a devastating heartbreak of a day—but not a surprise. 19 magazines will stop being printed. This closure of print was not a decision made by the MotorTrend company. Also, this does not affect the MotorTrend app or online video.

https://www.foliomag.com/ten-publis...-HU5YgCvO-dbnxfxq0WlMyz9R7Z7hnYbNvVjIxxBhHG8k

 

[SHOCKtheMONKEY]

I recently received my last issue of Autoweek. Same deal. First subscribed in the eighties...
At least they'll live on on line.

 

[RitcheyRch]

I prefer a magazine. Chances are I will forget about the on-line access.

I recently received my last issue of Autoweek. Same deal. First subscribed in the eighties...
At least they'll live on on line.

 

[Tommy Gun Images]

This trend will continue. I love print media but the reality is that neither the money nor the audience support it anymore.

Having said that I think you will start to see some very cool niche publications such as www.readmeta.com emerge with an even better print experience.


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[Sleek-Jet]

I still have boxes of CC and 4WOR from the 90s.

The problem with digital is it doesn't keep, eventually all that data is gone.

 

[JayBreww]

Does this include RiverWhips Magazine?!


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[RichL]

I prefer a magazine. Chances are I will forget about the on-line access.

This.
Bummer.

 

[Carlson-jet]

The advertising end finally dried up.
My dad saved all the Hot rod mags from the 50's up through the seventies. Maybe some day they will be worth what all of the Playboy and national geographic collections boxed up in garages and attics.

 

[Cole Trickle]

This trend will continue. I love print media but the reality is that neither the money nor the audience support it anymore.

Having said that I think you will start to see some very cool niche publications such as www.readmeta.com emerge with an even better print experience.


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No more advertising dollars....

Advertisers are no longer getting the value they are paying for. They have figured out new ways to spend that budget that is way more profitable. Alot of smart people jumped ship a long time ago and the masses are catching up and the rags are no longer bringing in new youth.

Look at Sema its crazy but the you tube kids are today's celebrities. Companies can get them to the booth or to create content for pennys on the dollar compared to the old school way.

TV is next.

 

[rivermobster]

I haven't picked up a magazine in decades...

But I Do have a subscription to the Motortrend channel...

Much more engageing watching a show like Road Kill or Engine Masters, than looking at a few pics and countless pages of advertising.

Video is far more entertaining to me.

 

[Carlson-jet]

I haven't picked up a magazine in decades...

But I Do have a subscription to the Motortrend channel...

Much more engageing watching a show like Road Kill or Engine Masters, than looking at a few pics and countless pages of advertising.

Video is far more entertaining to me.

That and the same staged pictures just lost the luster.

I like looking through the oldies I wasn't around for or just too young to read. Many skilled dudes back in the day.

 

[riverroyal]

Thrasher is the only magazine that matters

And beaver hunt

 

[lbhsbz]

The problem with the digital versions is that they're so riddled with pop-ups and adds you can't hardly read through the actual content. At least in a magazine you can turn the fucking page if you don't give a shit about what they're trying to sell and keep reading...with the digital stuff, you have a wait until they've decided you waited long enough...shortly before which I usually close the fucking window and go find something else to do.

 

[Carlson-jet]

The problem with the digital versions is that they're so riddled with pop-ups and adds you can't hardly read through the actual content. At least in a magazine you can turn the fucking page if you don't give a shit about what they're trying to sell and keep reading...with the digital stuff, you have a wait until they've decided you waited long enough...shortly before which I usually close the fucking window and go find something else to do.

Sucks there is no more adware available for guys like us who use windows 95. lol

 

[Tommy Gun Images]

Does this include RiverWhips Magazine?!


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LOL... no

 

[Tank]

The problem with the digital versions is that they're so riddled with pop-ups and adds you can't hardly read through the actual content. At least in a magazine you can turn the fucking page if you don't give a shit about what they're trying to sell and keep reading...with the digital stuff, you have a wait until they've decided you waited long enough...shortly before which I usually close the fucking window and go find something else to do.

LOL, that's how they make their money to continue bringing product. I remember back in the fat years of Powerboat Magazine people used to complain ALLLLLLLL THE TIME! About how many advertisements were in the magazine and that it was just a big ad book, etc. I tried to explain til I was blue in the face, "that's how the magazine you love stays in business. Don't fuckin' complain!" And then BAM! Economy took a shit, no one was buying ad space. nearly every tangible performance boating magazine disappeared nearly over night. Sad time. Online stuff is getting it's legs under it but it's still not the same. I agree.

 

[Taboma]

I prefer a magazine. Chances are I will forget about the on-line access.

I'm with you, old school mag guy here. The only time I'll bother with the online BS ads and popups, is if I'm researching one particular vehicle test comparison (As an example). I've taken Motor Trend mag forever, but they've really started to piss me off because there's always something left out of the mag article they want to lure you to the web to see --- Bullshit. I also take Automobile magazine, but only because they basically give me my subscription for a couple bucks a year.
Jesus, time spent on the shitter's going to get really boring

 

[sirbob]

This trend will continue. I love print media but the reality is that neither the money nor the audience support it anymore.

Having said that I think you will start to see some very cool niche publications such as www.readmeta.com emerge with an even better print experience.


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Great site - added to my list

 

[TPC]

Shame. Sorry to see print media go.
We have a little weekly Newspaper out here called the Acorn. It's gaining popularity.
Still see Drive magazine in the car dealers service dept waiting room.

 

[LargeOrangeFont]

I still have boxes of CC and 4WOR from the 90s.

The problem with digital is it doesn't keep, eventually all that data is gone.

Huh?

Unless they are Hillary’s emails, the data is never “gone”.

 

[LargeOrangeFont]

I haven't picked up a magazine in decades...

But I Do have a subscription to the Motortrend channel...

Much more engageing watching a show like Road Kill or Engine Masters, than looking at a few pics and countless pages of advertising.

Video is far more entertaining to me.

I agree. They have been doing a pretty good job.

 

[AZMIDLYF]

I still read the newspaper daily. Progress right?

 

[RitcheyRch]

I wonder if they will provide refunds. I get Car Craft, Super Chevy, Truckin and Truck Trend from TEN Publishing. I know I will not read them on-line.

EDIT: Just emailed them to see about cancelling and a partial refund.

 

[Go-Fly]

I grew up with print but times change. Then again, I grew up with privacy of what I could read. Today, everything is tracked in the shadow of "we are here to make it better for you".

 

[monkeyswrench]

What really sucks to me, I'll never have one of my own cars in a magazine. That had always been a goal, worked on a bunch for others, name mentioned, etc...Always a bridesmaid, never a bride kind of deal. Archived photos on someone's server are not the same as a magazine framed in the shop

I guess I was born to the wrong time...

 

[Tommy Gun Images]

Great site - added to my list

Order the print mag. It’s everything a Magazine should be. It’s beautifully printed and in landscape format. It’s basically a coffee table book. It’s the only subscription I have.


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[Wheeler]

I haven't picked up a magazine in decades...


Much more engageing watching a show like Road Kill or Engine Masters, than looking at a few pics and countless pages of advertising.

Video is far more entertaining to me.

Some things just can't be experienced with video.

 

[rivermobster]

I wonder if they will provide refunds. I get Car Craft, Super Chevy, Truckin and Truck Trend from TEN Publishing. I know I will not read them on-line.

EDIT: Just emailed them to see about cancelling and a partial refund.

Way way back in the day...

Hot Rod and Car Craft had center fold pics of funny cars and shit. I had em taped up all over my room. When they stopped doing that, I was major league disappointed.

My subscription lapsed once I realized they were never going to bring those pics back...

Subscribe to the Motor Trend Channel. You might be surprised at what you find there.

 

[Racer56]

Anyone take into consideration that millennials could give two shits about diesel power, street rodder or any other specialty car magazine. Most kids nowadays don't even want a driver's license. I think the specialty car mag's are doomed wether it's in print or digital form.

 

[pronstar]

I recently received my last issue of Autoweek. Same deal. First subscribed in the eighties...
At least they'll live on on line.

Way back when it was printed on newsprint...I was a subscriber as well.


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[pronstar]

Causality...why did the ad dollars dry-up?

Because people don’t read print like they used to, and eyeballs attract advertisers.

People want immersive media, and print can’t deliver it.

Plus printing and distributing paper is massively expensive, and impossible to accurately track.

And there’s a lot of funny business that happens with the bookkeeping when distributing print.

The “print is dead” writing has been on the wall for quite some time.


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[Taboma]

Causality...why did the ad dollars dry-up?

Because people don’t read print like they used to, and eyeballs attract advertisers.

People want immersive media, and print can’t deliver it.

Plus printing and distributing paper is massively expensive, and impossible to accurately track.

And there’s a lot of funny business that happens with the bookkeeping when distributing print.

The “print is dead” writing has been on the wall for quite some time.


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With "Print is Dead", does this mean I can expect in the near future that 80% of the mail I receive won't be PRINTED advertising ?
Of course if that becomes the case, the USPS will dry up and wither away.

 

[KevinR]

I recently received my last issue of Autoweek. Same deal. First subscribed in the eighties...
At least they'll live on on line.

I was shocked when I received the last edition of AutoWeek. Same as you, started in early 80s. Bummer.

This week I received a letter from editor of Road&Track that said my remaining AW subscription would be tagged onto my current R&T subscription. I’ve been getting R&T since the 80s also, and I really like the most recent changes from a couple years ago, but it doesn’t fill the gap that AW did.

 

[HydroSkreamin]

I receive Hot Rod, Car Craft, Super Chevy, Chevy Hi-Performance, Street Rodder, and Hemmings Muscle monthly, and my wife got me a subscription to Hop Up, which has been a cluster since I received 2 issues and they had restructuring.

I find sitting quietly and reading my stack of magazines is relaxing. No distractions, pop-up ads, or links to take me down the rabbit hole.

I also like being able to do a Google search and find online content relatively instantly, so there’s advantages to both.

One of the things I’m wondering is if we’re really only interested in the pictures; they load a lot faster and there’s a seemingly endless supply for the digital version.

Having been involved in the hi-performance industry all of my life, I find a terrific amount of inaccuracies in a LOT of features and tech articles. It seems worse today than 20 years ago. Previously you earned respect as a journalist or you didn’t make it. It seems nowadays anyone that can cluge 10 sentences together is a blogger.

YMMV

 

[sprintcvx]

End of an era like someone has said. It's too bad because I enjoyed reading all those mags growing up.

 

[TPC]

HotBoat has a magazine?

 

[Sleek-Jet]

Huh?

Unless they are Hillary’s emails, the data is never “gone”.

Try firing up a hard drive from the turn of the century, chances are it won't work. If it does, good luck easily extracting any usefully data off of it.

Just last week I grabbed a USB stick from my file cabinet and plugged it in, it didn't work. The documents on that drive are gone.

Massive amounts of energy and infrastructure are needed to maintain historical data. It can all be gone in a second. Yet we can still read books made on the first printing presses.

Also, the "content" is now in sole control of its creators. With a magazine you physically own those articles and can go look at them at any time. With digital subscriptions the publisher can just make them go away.

 

[Taboma]

Try firing up a hard drive from the turn of the century, chances are it won't work. If it does, good luck easily extracting any usefully data off of it.

Just last week I grabbed a USB stick from my file cabinet and plugged it in, it didn't work. The documents on that drive are gone.

Massive amounts of energy and infrastructure are needed to maintain historical data. It can all be gone in a second. Yet we can still read books made on the first printing presses.

Also, the "content" is now in sole control of its creators. With a magazine you physically own those articles and can go look at them at any time. With digital subscriptions the publisher can just make them go away.

That's a very sobering message sir.
But so true and having lost all our printed picture albums, with family pictures going back well into the early 1930's in a wildfire, it's devastating.
Now I'm religious about keeping updated flash drives in our bank safety deposit box, but as you pointed out, they're vulnerable to both losing the data and becoming an obsolete media in the future.
So what's the solution, is there one ?

 

[LargeOrangeFont]

Try firing up a hard drive from the turn of the century, chances are it won't work. If it does, good luck easily extracting any usefully data off of it.

Just last week I grabbed a USB stick from my file cabinet and plugged it in, it didn't work. The documents on that drive are gone.

Massive amounts of energy and infrastructure are needed to maintain historical data. It can all be gone in a second. Yet we can still read books made on the first printing presses.

Also, the "content" is now in sole control of its creators. With a magazine you physically own those articles and can go look at them at any time. With digital subscriptions the publisher can just make them go away.

It is on you to keep your own data backed up and maintained. But print can quickly be destroyed as well.

All this stuff is going to be in the cloud where it is served and backed up. The content is going nowhere, you can search for whatever you want with your subscription. If the provider chooses to no longer provide it, I don’t know what to tell you.

As it relates to car stuff, most topics are rehashed, updated, recycled etc. every few years. Unless you are interested in what a magazine did to hop up an AMC 304 in 1985, you can probably find up to date content related to what you are looking for.

Everything is subscription based now, that is just the way it is.

It is massive amounts of resources printing magazines and sending them all over the world as well.

 

[Sleek-Jet]

It is on you to keep your own data backed up and maintained. But print can quickly be destroyed as well.

All this stuff is going to be in the cloud where it is served and backed up. The content is going nowhere, you can search for whatever you want with your subscription.

Everything is subscription based now, that is just the way it is.

I have little faith "the cloud" is permanent. YMMV.

 

[pronstar]

The cloud is just someone else’s computer...


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[LargeOrangeFont]

I have little faith "the cloud" is permanent. YMMV.

It is permanent, you’ve been using “cloud” based services for over a quarter century.

Email provider, messenger providers, eBay, Amazon, social media, online purchases, are all in essence “cloud” solutions.

 

[LargeOrangeFont]

The cloud is just someone else’s computer...


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Yep, and you just pay to use it

 

[rivermobster]

It is permanent, you’ve been using “cloud” based services for over a quarter century.

Email provider, messenger providers, eBay, Amazon, social media, online purchases, are all in essence “cloud” solutions.

All true...

And this cloud stuff is ultra redundant! They have multiple back ups in place, in multiple different locations. I have my stuff in my house backed up on two different drives. But if my house burns down? It's gone. Just like everything else.

So I'm taking the real important stuff and moving it onto a cloud based storage service.

Everyone here should be doing the same. It's too cheap these days NOT to do it!

 

[cyclone]

I work for Motor Trend/TEN and the writing was on the wall over a decade ago. Each month we'd have circulation meetings at Hot Rod to discuss ways to stem the flow of lost newsstand sales, which is all anyone in management really cared about. Ad rates were based largely on newsstand sales and the subscriber base. The subscriber base was getting older and kids weren't reading/buying the magazine, nor did they want to get a driver's license so there weren't many new readers coming along to replace the boomers who were disappearing. Lots of ideas were thrown about on how to fix the problems, few were implemented, and I made a conscious decision to get out of the print publication biz while I could. By pure accident in 2011 we launched a YouTube show called Roadkill and almost instantly the show began making kids fans of cars. Our core demographic were 4-20yr old kids who then got their parents into watching the show. Obviously these kids weren't drivers but they loved the video content and loved to play video games with cars in them. Most of their parents weren't "car people" but they came along for the ride to bond with their kids watching a show without profanity in it and without wrenches being thrown across the shop in anger. In the meantime I watched from the sidelines as title after print magazine title was shut down as the readership dwindled and ad dollars did the same. It's disappointing because I went to school specifically to write about cars and my career began with jobs at Mini Trucking, Off-Road, Hot Boat, Sport Truck and Hot Rod magazines. I haven't written a proper magazine article in a couple years but I never stopped telling stories about cars. The delivery method has changed but the idea is still the same; people will always love their toys and will watch/read great stories about adventures with those toys. We just don't have as many opportunities to sit on the toilet and flip through pages about those adventures now the majority of those print titles are gone. What I'm most bummed about right now, though, is that two weeks before Christmas a whole bunch of my colleagues who worked on the production side (I'm told the editorial staffs of the print magazines will continue to produce content for the websites) lost their jobs, their income and their identity. These were passionate people who loved what they did.

 

[HydroSkreamin]

Well spoken, @cyclone and keep doing what you’re doing; the recipe seems to be working well!

Your comment on your former colleagues’ fate weighed on my mind as well. I wish them all well and hope they land on their feet.

 

[cyclone]

Well spoken, @cyclone and keep doing what you’re doing; the recipe seems to be working well!

Your comment on your former colleagues’ fate weighed on my mind as well. I wish them all well and hope they land on their feet.

thank you, Hydro.

 

[Yellowboat]

Anyone take into consideration that millennials could give two shits about diesel power, street rodder or any other specialty car magazine. Most kids nowadays don't even want a driver's license. I think the specialty car mag's are doomed wether it's in print or digital form.

If you live in ca, and are under 40, what cars did you see growing up/ have as a teen that yoh can legally hot rod? Basicly zero. Smog killed it.

 

[cyclone]

If you live in ca, and are under 40, what cars did you see growing up/ have as a teen that yoh can legally hot rod? Basicly zero. Smog killed it.

Anything can be hot rodded. its all a matter of how committed you are to the lifestyle and dealing with the BS that comes along with it. After High School I was modding Hondas and Toyotas because that's what my friends were into. My school parking lot was full of them. Very few muscle cars. Although I loved hot rods and muscle cars I just didn't relate to them at the time.

 

[LargeOrangeFont]

Anything can be hot rodded. its all a matter of how committed you are to the lifestyle and dealing with the BS that comes along with it. After High School I was modding Hondas and Toyotas because that's what my friends were into. My school parking lot was full of them. Very few muscle cars. Although I loved hot rods and muscle cars I just didn't relate to them at the time.

Agreed. Mose people at my school were doing the mini truck/full size truck thing. There were a ton of modded S10s at school. We had quite a few bagged and static lowered trucks, and a few imports, but not as many as you’d think. I had the 2nd fastest car in high school in my 94 Caprice cop car. A kid had a faster 69 El Camino, but blew the engine and went and got an S10 and had it bagged.

There is always stuff to hot rod.