Maker Pro
Maker Pro

Bad year for magazines.

I

ian field

Jan 1, 1970
0
At the beginning of the year I discovered that Technology-at-Home was
suspending publication, at which point I enquired about the likelihood of
payment for fault reports I'd submitted, I was assured that these payments
had been budgeted for and told to send an invoice. A month has passed with
no reply so I emailed again - also with no reply, so I did a bit of googling
to see if I could find any info on what's going on.

Among the hits was a forum on which it transpires that Television Magazine
has also gone tits-up!

So far the messages coming out of Technology-at-Home suggest a modicum of
optimism that they may yet return to the market place the Television link
redirects to Saint John Patrick Publishers "site under construction" - I
wondered if anyone out there had any further news on either publication?
 
H

Homer J Simpson

Jan 1, 1970
0
Among the hits was a forum on which it transpires that Television Magazine
has also gone tits-up!

I suspect that most speciality magazines like this will appear at most in
online form. It cuts out all of the printing, fulfillment and mailing costs,
and advertisers have direct links from potential customers to their own
websites rather than mailing catalogs. Hard to argue with those reasons.
 
A

Arfa Daily

Jan 1, 1970
0
ian field said:
At the beginning of the year I discovered that Technology-at-Home was
suspending publication, at which point I enquired about the likelihood of
payment for fault reports I'd submitted, I was assured that these payments
had been budgeted for and told to send an invoice. A month has passed with
no reply so I emailed again - also with no reply, so I did a bit of
googling to see if I could find any info on what's going on.

Among the hits was a forum on which it transpires that Television Magazine
has also gone tits-up!

So far the messages coming out of Technology-at-Home suggest a modicum of
optimism that they may yet return to the market place the Television link
redirects to Saint John Patrick Publishers "site under construction" - I
wondered if anyone out there had any further news on either publication?
Hi Ian

I spoke to John R on the phone last week, and he had been told by one of the
contributors that stayed on with TeleMag after we left, that it was
definitely finished for good. My copy was always got in for me by my
newsagent, so I didn't have a subscription, but apparently, Nexus have
written to all the subscribers to tell them that publication had ceased. As
far as T @ H goes, I also had an invoice in for fault reports and an ongoing
article series that I was doing for them, but as soon as I found out the
level of financial problem that the owners were suffering, I cancelled it. I
am still in touch with them, but I don't know yet if there is any definite
intention to continue publishing by whatever method, in the future. I know
that Steve has not personally ruled it out, but I don't know how it will
stand with the other two. I have told them that if they do get it going
again, I will continue to contribute for free for as long as it takes. The
way I look at it, with the sad decline of TeleMag after the editing team
were changed, and now its demise, I'd rather contribute my time for free, if
it gets a valid publication for the trade, going again. What is your take on
this ?

Arfa
 
I

ian field

Jan 1, 1970
0
Arfa Daily said:
Hi Ian

I spoke to John R on the phone last week, and he had been told by one of
the contributors that stayed on with TeleMag after we left, that it was
definitely finished for good. My copy was always got in for me by my
newsagent, so I didn't have a subscription, but apparently, Nexus have
written to all the subscribers to tell them that publication had ceased.
As far as T @ H goes, I also had an invoice in for fault reports and an
ongoing article series that I was doing for them, but as soon as I found
out the level of financial problem that the owners were suffering, I
cancelled it. I am still in touch with them, but I don't know yet if there
is any definite intention to continue publishing by whatever method, in
the future. I know that Steve has not personally ruled it out, but I don't
know how it will stand with the other two. I have told them that if they
do get it going again, I will continue to contribute for free for as long
as it takes. The way I look at it, with the sad decline of TeleMag after
the editing team were changed, and now its demise, I'd rather contribute
my time for free, if it gets a valid publication for the trade, going
again. What is your take on this ?

Arfa

There are certain times of day that I like to get away from the PC and read
articles printed on paper so I miss T_at_H and will miss TeleMag - even what
it became under Nexus!

For this reason web based publishing wouldn't appeal to me unless its very
low priced, after all most of the likely content can be found on the net
anyway - even if it is a little hard work running searches to find it.

As T_at_H is partly made up of the team I dealt with when I used to be a
regular contributor at TeleMag, I would like to see them return from
publication suspended, although I feel that they tried to cater too much for
the technically minded man in the street and less so for the "down to the
metal" service engineer. Under the Nexus flag TeleMag was severely weakened
and T_at_H might have done better to have taken them head on!

The link re-direct from TeleMag to SJPP seems to hint they've already been
sold and may re appear in due course - hopefully better than it was under
Nexus.
 
A

Arfa Daily

Jan 1, 1970
0
ian field said:
There are certain times of day that I like to get away from the PC and
read articles printed on paper so I miss T_at_H and will miss TeleMag -
even what it became under Nexus!

For this reason web based publishing wouldn't appeal to me unless its very
low priced, after all most of the likely content can be found on the net
anyway - even if it is a little hard work running searches to find it.

As T_at_H is partly made up of the team I dealt with when I used to be a
regular contributor at TeleMag, I would like to see them return from
publication suspended, although I feel that they tried to cater too much
for the technically minded man in the street and less so for the "down to
the metal" service engineer. Under the Nexus flag TeleMag was severely
weakened and T_at_H might have done better to have taken them head on!

The link re-direct from TeleMag to SJPP seems to hint they've already been
sold and may re appear in due course - hopefully better than it was under
Nexus.
Actually, the T @ H editorial team, was only anything to do with the
original team of John and Tessa, for a very brief period, before they
decided that it was not for them, due to a conflict of personalities with
one of the owners.

Originally, when the editing of TeleMag was brought in-house, John and Tessa
were summoned to the offices ( they were both freelancers ) and just told
that their services would no longer be required. No notice period, no sorry.
Their contracts were just terminated. Both of them were actually very upset
about the way that they were treated, and that was a lot to do with why
Steve, Michael and Elaine got together to start T @ H. They felt that John
and Tessa still had a valuable contribution to make to a trade magazine.
They were thus hired to edit the new mag, but unfortunately, the owners'
ideas for it didn't really match with John and Tessa's editing style, so
there came a parting of the ways. That left the owners with the whole task
of both running and editing the magazine, as well as dealing with the
contributors. This on top of their normal work.

This is the main reason that it went to bi-monthly publication, which I
think was perhaps a contributory factor in its current status. I also found
that having Elaine as a " commissioning editor " made it difficult to write
for them. With John and Tessa, they always accepted everything I wrote ' as
was ' and tended to fit it in to the magazine without making many if any
changes to the running length. I'm pretty sure that you probably used to
find the same thing, as your monitor fault reports, which I always enjoyed
reading, used to be relatively long and detailed. When I was contributing
fault reports, I only used to bother sending in the interesting ones, and
used to make a point of detailing the diagnostic methods that I had used to
arrive at the cause of the problem. I could never see the point in the "
This one wouldn't play discs, so I replaced the laser ... " variety of
report.

However. my descriptive style of writing didn't work well with Elaine, and
she was forever trying to cut down the length and content, which in turn,
didn't sit well with me, so I finished up dealing exclusively with Steve,
who was the technical editor.

At the end of the day, I think that they had to appeal to too wide an
audience to make it financially viable. This led to the mag having a bit of
an identity crisis I think. I continued to write my stuff as technical
articles, aimed at service engineers, but whilst 'on the street'
technophiles might have found the content of them interesting, I fear that
the detail would have gone over their heads. The final nail in the coffin of
T @ H in its paper form, was the distribution costs via W.H.Smith wholesale,
and for this reason, I can't see it ever re-surfacing as a mag in print.
Like you, I also like to read 'proper' paper journals, but I don't think
that we are ever going to do that again for a trade mag serving our business
....

Still, hats off to the T @ H team, and I am very sorry that in the end, they
didn't get to fully realise their dream, and ended up personally so far out
of pocket on the venture. It took a lot of guts to have a go, and it was a
shame that it came to an end just as I felt it was beginning to find its
place in the market.

Arfa
 
I

ian field

Jan 1, 1970
0
Actually, the T @ H editorial team, was only anything to do with the
original team of John and Tessa, for a very brief period, before they
decided that it was not for them, due to a conflict of personalities with
one of the owners.

It did occur to me that something was wrong there - the absence of J & T
should have been a clue.
Originally, when the editing of TeleMag was brought in-house, John and
Tessa were summoned to the offices ( they were both freelancers ) and just
told that their services would no longer be required. No notice period, no
sorry. Their contracts were just terminated. Both of them were actually
very upset about the way that they were treated, and that was a lot to do
with why Steve, Michael and Elaine got together to start T @ H. They felt
that John and Tessa still had a valuable contribution to make to a trade
magazine. They were thus hired to edit the new mag, but unfortunately, the
owners' ideas for it didn't really match with John and Tessa's editing
style, so there came a parting of the ways. That left the owners with the
whole task of both running and editing the magazine, as well as dealing
with the contributors. This on top of their normal work.

So T at H might still be going if they'd made more of an effort to get along
with J & T?!
This is the main reason that it went to bi-monthly publication, which I
think was perhaps a contributory factor in its current status. I also
found that having Elaine as a " commissioning editor " made it difficult
to write for them. With John and Tessa, they always accepted everything I
wrote ' as was ' and tended to fit it in to the magazine without making
many if any changes to the running length. I'm pretty sure that you
probably used to find the same thing, as your monitor fault reports, which
I always enjoyed reading, used to be relatively long and detailed. When I
was contributing fault reports, I only used to bother sending in the
interesting ones, and used to make a point of detailing the diagnostic
methods that I had used to arrive at the cause of the problem. I could
never see the point in the " This one wouldn't play discs, so I replaced
the laser ... " variety of report.

While I was googling to try and find info on what was going on I stumbled on
a forum devoted to the impending demise of Television, T at H got quite a
few mentions and wherever EE,s name got mentioned it was in a negative
context, it was mentioned that she had made one or two insulting comments in
her regular column - I think the words were: "I think she needs to work on
her people skills"! Your point about editing is well taken, my only 3 fault
reports before publication ceased no longer said the same thing that I
originally wrote!
However. my descriptive style of writing didn't work well with Elaine, and
she was forever trying to cut down the length and content, which in turn,
didn't sit well with me, so I finished up dealing exclusively with Steve,
who was the technical editor.

She didn't cut down her own contribution though! The few times I bothered
reading her column it contributed (along with other aspects of the magazines
presentation) a feeling of "where's the recies & knitting patterns?! It was
I think, one of the owners who took part in the forum I found who commented
that in one branch of WHS he found T at H amongst the knitting pattern
magazines - an easy mistake to make!
At the end of the day, I think that they had to appeal to too wide an
audience to make it financially viable. This led to the mag having a bit
of an identity crisis I think. I continued to write my stuff as technical
articles, aimed at service engineers, but whilst 'on the street'
technophiles might have found the content of them interesting, I fear that
the detail would have gone over their heads. The final nail in the coffin
of T @ H in its paper form, was the distribution costs via W.H.Smith
wholesale, and for this reason, I can't see it ever re-surfacing as a mag
in print. Like you, I also like to read 'proper' paper journals, but I
don't think that we are ever going to do that again for a trade mag
serving our business

There were a couple of projects I wanted to send in for component testing
gadgets, but they involved running equipment made from salvaged monitor
components directly from the mains, these would have been no problem for
experienced service engineers that were targeted by Television Magazine but
would have been courting certain disaster if presented to the casual
interest audience T at H seemed to be aiming for!
...

Still, hats off to the T @ H team, and I am very sorry that in the end,
they didn't get to fully realise their dream, and ended up personally so
far out of pocket on the venture. It took a lot of guts to have a go, and
it was a shame that it came to an end just as I felt it was beginning to
find its place in the market.

The fact that I took out a subscription at the outset was largely out of a
sense of loyalty to J & T, now they've gone the magazine would have to be
pretty damn good to keep me paying for it, I wonder if I echo the sentiments
of other readers? There's no doubt about the dire state of the servicing
trade, I've not been actively involved in monitor repair for a while now.
All said and done the state of the industry is the biggest single factor in
what happened to both magazines, but I have a suspicion that if T at H had
retained J & T's editorial style they may have fared much better - possibly
even prevailed.

There are rumours that Television Magazine has already been bought, and
appears to be in the same stable as Electronics World, my newsagent tells me
that he gets notification from the distributor if a magazine ceases
publication, so he may be able to give me more info after he's contacted
them on Monday.
 
C

Colin McCormick

Jan 1, 1970
0
All

Let us hope that all the readers and contributors of both
publications (TeleMag and T@H) can come together and support
any such replacement TeleMag which might arise from the ashes.

I was a TeleMag subscriber and was told that the last
publication dated January 2007 was distributed in December,
and that a refund cheque would be issued for the remainder
of my subscription.

There is still a need for a printed magazine which includes
detailed articles as well as interesting fault reports.
It's bound to be hard when a new DVD player costs just £9.99
from Richer Sounds, and LCD/Plasma repairs are often beyond
the facilities of smaller service agents. But that's no
excuse for the way TeleMag was put together sometimes over
the last couple of years.

Colin
 
A

Arfa Daily

Jan 1, 1970
0
ian field said:
It did occur to me that something was wrong there - the absence of J & T
should have been a clue.

I think that they were only directly involved for the first two issues,
before there was a problem with one of the owners that J & T perceived as
editorial interference. Sort of - either they had been hired for their
editing expertise, or not ...

So T at H might still be going if they'd made more of an effort to get
along with J & T?!

This is my feeling, but from talking to both sides, I think that J & T felt
that they could continue to assemble the mag along the lines of TeleMag,
particularly as almost all of the potential contributors were those of us
already well known to them, but one of the owners, who had some experience
of the magazine world, felt that the owners themselves needed to be fully in
charge of content and presentation, to protect their financial investment. I
can kind of see where they might feel that, but by the same token, I think
that up until that point, TeleMag had been the single best edited and
presented electronics trade mag on the market, and I think that was entirely
due to the stewardship of John and Tessa. Incidentally, you may be
interested to know that the reason the decline set in for TeleMag as a
commercially viable publication, was that it had not had an advertising
manager assigned to it for 2 years ...

While I was googling to try and find info on what was going on I stumbled
on a forum devoted to the impending demise of Television, T at H got quite
a few mentions and wherever EE,s name got mentioned it was in a negative
context, it was mentioned that she had made one or two insulting comments
in her regular column - I think the words were: "I think she needs to work
on her people skills"! Your point about editing is well taken, my only 3
fault reports before publication ceased no longer said the same thing that
I originally wrote!

Yes indeedy. I got off on the wrong foot with her, and she actually rang me
up at home. It was to do with the series on valve amps that I had in hand.
This was originally intended to be a follow on to the original article on
getting PA amp repair work that I did for TeleMag. John had already accepted
it in principle, in readiness for publication, and we had all agreed that it
should now go over into the new mag, but EE had other ideas, and decided
that no long-running series were going to go in, as the punters would get
bored with them. She sent me quite a pointed e-mail about it, and suggested
that I produced a pitch to put to her, which she would then review, and
decide how many words that I had to write if she deemed it of sufficient
interest. I told her that I was not one of the professional writers that she
was used to working with, and that I could not work under those sorts of
constraints. I told her that the first couple of parts were already written,
and said just what I wanted them to, so if that was not good enough then we
just wouldn't bother. John was really upset with this, and I think that the
episode only sought to underline the bad feelings that J & T were already
beginning to have. It was after that that I just dealt with Steve. He just
went ahead and told me to carry on submitting in the normal way, and he
would edit them. I still finished up having to rewrite major tracts to
satisfy their requirements, and as you say, it no longer really quite said
what I had intended. As it turned out, we never got as far as part 3 going
to print, although they still have it, so you never know, one day it might
see the light of day again ... The fault reports section changed
considerably when EE's old boy took over the handling of them, and some of
mine that I had submitted, were severely edited, to the point where I felt
that it was pointless to publish them.

She didn't cut down her own contribution though! The few times I bothered
reading her column it contributed (along with other aspects of the
magazines presentation) a feeling of "where's the recies & knitting
patterns?! It was I think, one of the owners who took part in the forum I
found who commented that in one branch of WHS he found T at H amongst the
knitting pattern magazines - an easy mistake to make!

Oddly enough, you are right on the money there, as I understand that she is
or was directly involved professionally, with a knitting or sewing magazine.
I too found her articles a little incongruous in an electronics mag, to put
it politely. Also, as she was setting herself up as an editor, on occasion,
her grammar left a little to be desired ...

There were a couple of projects I wanted to send in for component testing
gadgets, but they involved running equipment made from salvaged monitor
components directly from the mains, these would have been no problem for
experienced service engineers that were targeted by Television Magazine
but would have been courting certain disaster if presented to the casual
interest audience T at H seemed to be aiming for!

The fact that I took out a subscription at the outset was largely out of a
sense of loyalty to J & T, now they've gone the magazine would have to be
pretty damn good to keep me paying for it, I wonder if I echo the
sentiments of other readers? There's no doubt about the dire state of the
servicing trade, I've not been actively involved in monitor repair for a
while now. All said and done the state of the industry is the biggest
single factor in what happened to both magazines, but I have a suspicion
that if T at H had retained J & T's editorial style they may have fared
much better - possibly even prevailed.

Agreed. I think that given time, the original reader base would have all
migrated across to
T @ H, and probably the advertisers as well, but I guess that it was such a
financial burden and gamble, time wasn't on their side. The trade is dire at
times, for sure, but it's treated me pretty well over the years, and
continues to do so. These days, I do only trade audio work, and am probably
the only person in my area doing it, so tend to get the work from all of the
independant shops that still take such items in. Along with some commercial
vending machine boards that I do in large quantities, there is enough work
to keep me and my son going, and to pay for a couple of stateside holidays a
year. I don't know how much longer that will keep up for, but it's not
showing any signs of letting up at the moment.
There are rumours that Television Magazine has already been bought, and
appears to be in the same stable as Electronics World, my newsagent tells
me that he gets notification from the distributor if a magazine ceases
publication, so he may be able to give me more info after he's contacted
them on Monday.
That's interesting to hear. I understand that the title has been bought and
'parked', but I am not sure whether that is with any serious intention of
resuming publication, or a " just in case " scenario. I would like to know
what you find out on this score. Mail me direct off-group if you like, as
this thread is starting to get a bit long, and probably wandering a bit OT
now.

Arfa
 
I

ian field

Jan 1, 1970
0
Arfa Daily said:
That's interesting to hear. I understand that the title has been bought
and 'parked', but I am not sure whether that is with any serious intention
of resuming publication, or a " just in case " scenario. I would like to
know what you find out on this score. Mail me direct off-group if you
like, as this thread is starting to get a bit long, and probably wandering
a bit OT now.

Arfa

Nexus sent me a reply email confirming Television Magazine has ceased
publication, they made it clear that the title has not been taken over - so
that's the end of that then!
 
A

Arfa Daily

Jan 1, 1970
0
ian field said:
Nexus sent me a reply email confirming Television Magazine has ceased
publication, they made it clear that the title has not been taken over -
so that's the end of that then!

Oh well ...

Arfa
 
R

Ross Herbert

Jan 1, 1970
0
At the beginning of the year I discovered that Technology-at-Home was
suspending publication, at which point I enquired about the likelihood of
payment for fault reports I'd submitted, I was assured that these payments
had been budgeted for and told to send an invoice. A month has passed with
no reply so I emailed again - also with no reply, so I did a bit of googling
to see if I could find any info on what's going on.

Among the hits was a forum on which it transpires that Television Magazine
has also gone tits-up!

I received an email from a regular contributor to Television back in
November 2005 saying that new management had taken over and sackings
of long time staff had occurred. As a result, all regular contributors
to the mag were no longer contributing. Perhaps this was the
pre-cursor to it going Tits-up.

I was also informed that a new magazine would be starting up with all
the old Television contributors moving over. So far I haven't heard
whether this eventuated or not.
 
R

Ross Herbert

Jan 1, 1970
0
I received an email from a regular contributor to Television back in
November 2005 saying that new management had taken over and sackings
of long time staff had occurred. As a result, all regular contributors
to the mag were no longer contributing. Perhaps this was the
pre-cursor to it going Tits-up.

I was also informed that a new magazine would be starting up with all
the old Television contributors moving over. So far I haven't heard
whether this eventuated or not.


After having read the remaining posts from Arfa I can see that the new
mag did take off but it apparently never made it to Australia. It now
seems that this mag has gone Tits-up along with Television.
 
Top