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Let them advertise and use the extra revenue to produce some good content in the magazine.
Reader Bard-Alan Finlan is wondering what readers of <I>Stereophile</I> think about the recent introduction of ads for BMW cars and <I>FHM</I> magazine.
Get real, publishing a magazine is a business. And the reason Sterophile is around and many others are not is that it never forgets that. People shoulg be glad to see these ads. The bottom line is that more ads means more revenue which can lead to more content, and I'm in favor of more content.
I have no problem with Stereophile allowing a high-end car builder like BMW or Jaguar to run an ad in their magazine. Such ads can help keep a publication out of financial trouble and allow it to continue to focus on its mission. With that in mind, I do hope Stereophile will stick to the high-end and leave the Toshiba and JBL reviews to the A/V mags like Home Theater!
Quite simply, most of us reading this magazine are the target demographic for these products, mostly single males with a reasonable disposable income. Both BMW and the publishers of FHM (who are trying to please their advertisers) believe that the readership of Stereophile are likely to be consumers. As far as I'm concerned as long as an advert is legal, decent, honest and truthful, then for that advert to be prevented from being run must be some restriction of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. When you start restricting these, when do you draw the line and stop? When do you cease to have a democracy where free speech is permissible?
Great to see those ads and I think BMW and FHM have targetted the right customer group as majority HIFI lovers are men (no offence to Lads HIFI fans), and men love cars and woman generally. Feel that those ads sometimes help to clear up our mind a bit from only HIFI HIFI HIFI while "studying" the Stereophile mag.
I haven't seen the FHM magazine link, but the BMW link caught my eye right away. I thought the mini-movies were very well done and as a luxury car manufacturer, BMW is a fitting advertiser. The Stereophile crew has to live by the same motto that my family does, "We gotta eat." As long as they keep the hi-fi links as well, they can feel free diversify.
As long as it helps Stereophile maintain its competence and Stereophile retains its integrity in its articles, fine by me. Just as long as the ads have nothing to do with tobacco and adult products, since Stereophile should also be educational for the interested young generationour future audiophiles.
While I wouldn't consider it strong enough to cancel a subscription, I am sure we can get car ads in any other magazine. Stereophile offers a wealth of information to its readers. It's difficult enough finding out what new and present equipment audio manufacturers have in other publications. While I realize that stereophile may not be able to survive without ads, I think you should stick to audio/video related ads only.