Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Time; less cost, same revenue. Duh.

Sometimes we think newspaper reporters don't understand business at all. Hence the Toronto Star story about the laying off of the editorial staff of Time Canada, saying that the benefit will be to Maclean's and Rogers, its parent company. In fact, Time gets to keep its "Canadian" status and its Canadian advertising, but to cut the expense of providing Canadian content. How this is interpreted to give any advantage to Maclean's, which must produce a full editorial package, is a mystery. As magazine economics seems to be to newspaper reporters.

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

You're absolutely right. By reducing their editorial investment, Time has us over a barrel. Fortunately they didn't do the really smart thing and cut their editorial investment to zero by printing blank pages where the stories used to be. Then we'd really be screwed.

Good thing there's someone around here to teach us about economics.

5:34 pm  
Blogger D. B. Scott said...

Even when someone comments about Maclean's in a sympathetic way, you're so partisan you don't see it. I didn't say Time had you over a barrel. What I did say was that Time is spending less on editorial now, giving it a competitive advantage. If you don't understand that, perhaps you do need someone to teach you about economics.

6:03 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

So one definition of canadianmags is that it's the blog for people who think "competitive advantage" and "over a barrel" mean different things. No wonder it's so quiet around here.

11:42 pm  
Blogger D. B. Scott said...

As a matter of fact I do think there's a difference. To me "over a barrel" means hogtied and helpless, surely something Maclean's is not.

As for quietude, guilty as charged. Of course we can't know how controversial your blog is since you don't allow comments, moderated or otherwise.

12:04 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh shut up, Wells. Everybody else figured out the post was meant to reflect poorly on Time's decision. Except you.

2:00 pm  

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