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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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In Reply to: TAS: How to lose subscribers posted by The Duke on June 8, 2015 at 12:41:01:
I laughed when I saw this post. I haven't subscribed to or read any printed magazines since they started appearing on-line about 15 years ago. I used to subscribe to a bunch of them especially TAS and Stereophile through the 90's at least. When I read my first copy of TAS, they were already printing a glossy, high-quality edition that differed from its cohorts by by apparently biting the hands that were feeding them. They also published letters from readers that were often critical of the magazine and its writers. Like these forums today. I remember that one of the topics frequently brought up was the tone and content of the letters sent out to convince readers to resubscribe. Nearly every magazine I ever subscribed to, from hot-rods and comic books as a teenager to professional journals, gardening, Time, Life, and Newsweek, puked out at least 2 or 3 dull, boring, form letters generated by some drone in an office somewhere, to get me back on the subscriber's list. When TAS was young and advertising revenue needed to grow so they could survive, they had their staff writers - maybe HP himself, turned their considerable literary talents to crafting their own set of begging notices. Some of them sounded desperate. Some were pleading. Some were downright funny and I think that the real intent of the staff was to use the form of even the re-up letters to illustrate the clever, tongue in cheek style of writing to remind recently lapsed subscribers of what they will miss.
After tas had become more sustainable, they continued to send out the publishing industry's most pitiful begging notices for up to a year after subscriptions lapsed. They had a few other quirks that probably also persist today. I remember all the language trolls writing in to educate the tas writers that their notorious prohibition against copying their text for publication elsewhere "...Not a single word from this review ..." meant that TAS was claiming copyright protection for every word ever used in an tas review, including a, an, the. It was all done in a spirit of good humor. I hope you kept all six notices you have received so far. Perhaps you could upload them to this thread. I think a lot of us former subscribers would get a charge out of them.
Everything is going to the dogs
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Follow Ups
- RE: TAS: How to lose subscribers - mcbuddah 09:35:39 06/11/15 (1)
- RE: TAS: How to lose subscribers - stereo5 12:47:39 06/12/15 (0)
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