the whole point of a magazine is to get eyes on ads. It's NOT to conveniently lay out information in a way such as to help you get to it more quickly. Far from it. In fact, the OPPOSITE of that. If you are able to get to the information you want, and ONLY the information you want, quickly, then you aren't thumbing through the magazine looking for it. If you aren't thumbing through the magazine, you are getting repeat views of their ads. If you aren't getting repeat views of their ads, the ads won't be effective. If the ads aren't effective, vendors will stop buying ads. No ads, no magazine.
So, in essence, if you guys got your way, the magazine would have folded years ago because the ads would have been even less effective even earlier.
It's not the job of the publisher to make it easy for you to get YOUR favorite info. It's their job to try to get you to glance at their ads as often as possible.
TV gets paid for by commercials. At some point (if they already haven't) they will figure out how to measure what percentage of ads are getting the fast forward treatment (and thus less effective). Once that happens, TV will start to struggle as well.
Sports get paid for by ad revenue (both college and pro). You think ticket sales at Alabama make them a zillion dollars? Nope. ESPN (or whatever network) contracts make them a zillion dollars. ESPN is paid for by ads, no so much subscriber (especially these days).
Radio (both over the air and internet) gets paid for by ad revenue.
If we start doing away with ads of every kind, many of the things we really like will go away. Had BP magazine provided easy access to small blocks of content (either with index pages or search engines) the ad companies would have figured out immediately that their ads were not going to be seen.
I used to sell radio ads in the 90s. I competed against print and video media (as well as other radio stations, of course). Luckily, I was doing that right before the interwebz stood everything on its head.
I like BP mag, but one thing that irritates me to no end is that they don’t have an online index to issues. They have a valuable set of accurate transcriptions but it’s a huge PITA to have to physically leaf through every issue I own to try and find a transcription I know I have.
An index of transcriptions and cover articles/artists would add so much value for me I wouldn’t even think about cancelling. As it is, given the thin page count/content of the last few years, I think I will let my current subscription lapse.
I agree!
When I first got online (late '90s), I e-mailed BP about the lack of a decent search function on their website.
Told them, if I search '"Fima Ephron"...why don't I see the two issues he was covered vs. either no hits or a 1000 unrelated hits?
Told them I had every issue & I would catalog a Who's-Who in what issue for them. Nope...was told they were working on that...since 1999?
.....
Prior to that I was a loyal (not sure why, really) subscriber.
