On Friday, September 30th, Rogers Media announces an overhaul of its magazines, which is unexpected but not that surprising, with Flare, Sportsnet, MoneySense and Canadian Business becoming exclusively available online as of January next year. As for other giants of publication in Canada, Maclean’s, the representative national publication lasting more than a century, will go from weekly to monthly, while Chatelaine and Today’s Parent will only be published six times a year.
Also, Rogers shows its intention of selling all of its business-to-business magazines as well as its French publications. Steve Maich, the senior vice-president of digital content and publishing at Rogers Media said that the company is already communicating actively with potential buyers and hopes to stop those sales before next year.
What factors cause such changes? With the pervasive dissemination of digital access to large amount of resources, there is a gradual dwindling of the subscriber business across most of the printing media over the past five years. However, the loss in the number of subscribers is not the most serious problem, the bigger issue is due to the advertising revenues. While the demand for printing magazines decreasing, the advertising dedicated to magazine has started to fall dramatically in recent years, which can be the greatest reason of the bleak prospect for the paper media market. For example, print advertising revenue for Rogers Media sank more than 30 per cent during this one-year term.
The rapid decreasing revenue warns the giant publication. After realizing that maintaining the existing operation model will do no good but increasing its burden, Rogers Media decides to change its existing strategy and operation model – focusing more on the online subscribers and shutting down the printing editions. It is much wiser to transfer to digital format than simply closing them. It is a hard decision while it is a right decision. Keeping the original brand will not cut down its subscribers otherwise it may attract new subscribers (e.g. younger people) via online subscribing.
http://www.quertime.com/article/15-online-tools-to-create-e-magazines-ebooks-and-digital-newspapers/
Compared with tomes, piecemeal news is actually more acceptable for online reading. As digitalization is becoming more and more popular, shift in methods of transmission also caters to the consumers’ demand. Sticking to the old format rather than making changes will only lead the business to the end, while smart company would change its strategy in marketing promptly instead.
References:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rogers-magazines-1.3785707
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/newsalert-rogers-announces-stop-printing-145450197.html
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/newsalert-rogers-announces-stop-printing-145450197.html
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