Machine tool history question

Welcome to the club. It gets easier when you quit fighting it. d8-)

-- Ed Huntress

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Ed Huntress
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"Ed Huntress" wrote in news:xT4fh.4165$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe10.lga:

I had lunch with him at a PMPA event not too long ago. He moves a lot slower but he's still pretty sharp.

True enough. But they have competition for their "splinter" these days. I've been reading Automatic Machining for somewhere around 25 years. I suppose I'll read it until it folds. It's just one of those things that have become a comfortable part of the routine. Plus Don has always been good at writing "pep talk" editorials. A little corn ball most of the time, but you usually feel a little better about the industry after reading them.

I wonder how Lloyd Graff's rag is doing?

I find it hard to believe it's making any money with it, but you never know. Same with Production Machining which is a mag that I really like. Not just because they've published a couple of things that I've written, well, maybe just a little. But PM has decent technical content, plus they get out and interview real life people, which is becoming exceedingly rare these days.

Same here. We still advertise in it a few times per year but it's not a big part of the budget. It's a tough call. Our customers and distributors complain when we don't advertise in it and our competitors do. Honestly we don't get much in the way of leads so I suppose you could look at it as brand building.

Reply to
D Murphy

I don't know anything about it, but he looks like he's having fun. I don't know any of those people there, either--except, possibly, Barbara Donahue, who may have been a PR writer in the CAD/CAM field. At least, her name and location sound familiar.

'Hope it works. What the field needs now is some really good readership studies. It's hard to tell who's reading what, and what kind of attention they're paying to it. I was spoiled on that by big budgets and professional admen in the machine tool field, back in the mid-'70s, before they were all "right-sized" out of the business. We did some good studies at McGraw-Hill, for Cincinnati, Warner & Swasey, and so on.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

"Ed Huntress" wrote in news:5sLfh.351$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe08.lga:

It could be that they don't want us to know the reality about the readership. It might be grim news for them. The internet seems to be the preferred source for info these days. Although I still read a half dozen or more metal mags every month.

If it were up to me, I would give our web site a radical makeover. I would put a lot more info on there and it would be free for the looking. We are taking some baby steps in that direction. In addition to that I've finally convinced them that videos are a good thing. Even if the competition can watch them.

Reply to
D Murphy

Oh, yeah, there's always been some of that. Back when American Machinist was riding high, it was AM that pushed advertisers to do readership studies. The other magazines tended to ignore them.

Yes, and it's not just the Internet. It's also trade shows and somewhat better communication between vendors and customers, at least among the larger customers who run sophisticated supply-chain operations.

'Sounds like a good idea to me.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

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