Model Engineer magazine - gone?

They're not yet in administration. They asked Ernst and Young to sell what they can - which seems close to it but it isn't (according to the Indie last week).

Charles

STOP PRESS!

I know it's Bad Form to reply to one's own post which is in response to anothers comments... but here is a "Hot off the Press" update.

I have just spoken with Tony DeBiaise... (Finance Director of Highbury)

This is the situation at this time.

They are in discussion with potential buyers, and no decision has been made at this time whether to sell off the specialist publications or not. He is hopeful that a buyer can be found for the entire group. (I don't share that optimism having spent the past half hour reading the Stock Exchange notices... if they haven't sold it as a group already then it is unlikely that they will do so... IMHO) Mr DeBiaise states that "No consideration has been given..." (until my call at any rate) "... to selling off individual titles at this stage."

So, make of that what you will folks.

I don't think it will be as easy as just buying the mag out. You have to take into account staff and pensions rights which may add up to more than the mag is being listed for. You will also only get the mag and management up to a level, possibly not enough for the next stage of the process to get the mag printed and distributed which would have been probably handled en-bloc with the rest of the titles.

A buy out by another publishing house seems to be the least painless if it's possible.

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

Visit the new Model Engineering adverts page at:-

I agree ... they will attempt to sell off the profitable parts to prop up the losses on the ailing ducks... but there will come a time when if they can't sell en-masse they will be forced to realise whatever assets they can. The difficulty is that by that point the ME and MEW could have very little value themselves because of neglect during this transition phase.

That's if you take on the existing staff as a continuation of service... most of the staff are highbury staff ... not ME and MEW. It therefore doesn't necessarily follow that the editorial staff would be a burden because you would want to keep them in place (if they wanted to stay involved).

You want the staff 'down to a level'; not 'up' to one. The printing would be outsourced in any event, I know two companies (not in the generic printing business) who would eagerly bid for a base run of colour work to augment their present idle times.

The distribution is the problem in any event and is probably one of the reasons for the lack of desire to continue. The EU directives on distribution of Mags and Newspapers which is breaking the status quo on periodical distribution in this country is heading this way in any event. So no matter what happens with ME and MEW they are likley to be Subscription only in the near future (if they suvive ... exactly the same as EIM .. that why they are pushing to increase the number of subscribers).

Only if A.N.Other will take the lot or a subset (Specialist Publications being one such subset, but even then some of the 'specialist titles in their portfolio are pretty niche at the moment, I don't know if I would be keen to take all of them.)

Anyway.... it's all just happy speculation at this stage. I have though also contacted Ernst & Young this afternoon to enquire if they share Mr De Biaise's view about not selling individual titles.

Ian B

Another thought is that perhaps it's time to put the titles back together. Since the split up of MEW from ME, ME has turned / or been left as a steam train magazine [ loosely described ]

The heyday of ME I felt was in the 70's to late 80's when it was all in one.

Just my take on it.

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

Visit the new Model Engineering adverts page at:-

That would possibly work. When Kelsey split the Marine Engine bits from Stationary Engine into a separate quarterly mag it didn't last that long, and was eventually brought back into the main magazine. Personally I prefer the older ME's with the variety of subjects.

Peter

-- Peter A Forbes Prepair Ltd, Luton, UK snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk

I'm lucky enough to have probably 80% of ME's, from the first issue. Poorer in pocket, but rich in enjoyment!

Out of them all, I prefer the '35-'39 period. Included many high quality projects & practical advice, yet was still the province of folk able to get the very best from limited equipment.

I have some from the war years which are ex the publishers accounts dept. The contents are anotated with details of fees paid for each article or photograph, to whom & when. Fascinating. LBSC was (rightly) well looked after....

I seem to be one of the few folk who liked the large A4 version of the mid '50's. Their coverage was very wide, probably tackling competition from Meccano Magazine & the Model Maker. I still enjoy the diversity, covering steam, ic engines, maritime, cars, aviation, photography, workshop processes, tool making....

Must confess EIM & ME since the 90's have become rather too narrow to interest me. Fine if you are heavily into one of the current projects, but little to interest the armchair pundit.

Let's hope ME survives. If so, I hope they retest the current market to ensure they can stay relevant to experienced & emergent modellers.

Colin

Yes, I agree with recombining them, have been saying so for ages, and continue to say so at every opportunity.

Out of interest and because most or even all the relevant parties have passed on, can you share the odd annotation?

I preferred the articles from the 70's and 80's. There was enough money around to expand workshops and equipment but still time allowed to play with them. Up to this time the home shop only supported a lathe but around this time many expanded to get a small milling machine, even to building one like the Dore Westbury. It seems that today because of all the extra's and frills we have around us time isn't as free as it was a few years ago

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

Visit the new Model Engineering adverts page at:-

Must agree with colin. All three mags start a project and then appear to spin it out over so many issues that it takes ages to get to the end, and before that they start another one so on and on it goes. I know this makes you keep up your subscription but am sorry I have not renewed mine. Now I have no way of knwing if "they" will change content etc but that means another person who they have lost.

Yes please Colin... I too would find that fascinating.... I have some figures from various publications in the late 70's .. but would be very interested in the figures from so far back for M.E.

......... snip.... from Colin.........

I tend to share that view Colin, I still subscribe to ME simply because I have a/an (almost) full collection from issue 1 and I still enjoy the read ... but nowhere near as much as I did before the split. I dropped MEW in favour of the US variants about 2 years ago, much preferring their mix of 'stuff'. A previous post suggested that perhaps new owners should recombine ME and MEW ... frankly I never did understand that move (the split) other than as a means of launching another title 'on the cheap'. I don't think the split had much to do with readers preferences and was simply potential advertising revenue derived. After all using largely the same team they doubled their advertising income almost overnight. I don't believe the Trade would object to a recombination... and I suspect neither would the vast majority of the readership.

................

...snip...

I couldn't agree more on that one John.... My Foden has been on the bench for over 18months awaiting me getting around to stripping her down for a boiler retest. I just don't seem to be able to space out enough solid hours (i.e.without constant interuptions and other demands) and the job never seems to progress. I seem to spend more time taking the tools in and out of the tool box than I do actually producing anything tangible,... no fun at all!

IanB

"Out of interest and because most or even all the relevant parties have passed on, can you share the odd annotation? "

Re: Annotations from ME Accounts Dept

I've looked thru' some of the '41 copies. These were the last of the large-page ME's, before the wartime austerity small copies were introduced.

Cover price was 6d. For those to whom this is a foreign language, LBSC could make =A34.10.0 an article -- ie 180 6d's. Don't know how much todays' ME sells for, but I suspect 180 times that number is unlikely to be less than =A3400..... & there was a war on, with little money about. Chaps in the front line didn't make much.

My copies have Accounts Dept on the front, & are defaced by :-

a=2E The ads have sticky labels affixed which show how much was billed per advertiser b=2E The content pages are crossed out & details of fee paid, & name & address of casual contributors written on c=2E Some very regular contributors don't have fees shown (Westbury, Ned etc), but others such as LBSC do.

These defacings are now historic comment !

Advertisers were typically paying =A33 to =A33.15.0 for a quarter page (Drummonds,Tyzack) & =A32 to =A32.5.0 for an 1/8th page (Stuart Turner, Buck & Ryan etc). Inner front page went from =A312 (Bennett College) to =A314.10.0 for the RAF -- national fervour in support of the war didn't seem to carry much weight with the Accounts Dept !

Front cover photographs (typically quarter page) earned 7/6d.

Content

A 3-page constructional article with illustrations & plans (eg Arab Dhow) was paid =A33.3.0. 2 1/4 pages on Miniature Injectors fetched =A32.7.0. A 1-pager on Modellng Railway Signals with a couple of pix was =A31, with a one-pager on a simple model Stirling Hot Air engine was =A31.1.0

LBSC seemed to be paid per article, & at this time they were very wide-ranging. Locomotives for the Road - (2 1/2 pages) was =A33.15.0. 3 pages on a steam- driven Morris Cowley (full size!) was =A34.10.0, as was 3 pages on Molly, plus an American 4-6-4.

Bradley had a 3 page article on Modifications to a Milling attachment, with pix & diagrams -- =A33. Sparey had a heavily-illustrated series on a General Purpose Duration Aeroplane -- =A32.10.0 for 2 1/2 pages.

Unfortunately, an excellent series on Improving the 2 stroke by Westbury ran through this period, but no individual article was priced -- probably a fee was paid for the series.

Tools ideas varied -- =A32 for an emery band & disc polisher, with plans, 17/6d for a 1-page article on a bending jig, 7/6 for a quarter-page transfer scriber. Repairing a child's pedal car had a couple of paras & was worth 2/6. Individual hints & gadgets varied from 2/6 to 5/-

Colin

MEW is £3.75 so this works out to £675 A three page article with pic's gets about £40.00 per page at present. Big difference.

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

Visit the new Model Engineering adverts page at:-

While I'm very much a novice in model engineering terms, my position as senior managing editor in a large magazine contract publisher does give me some insight into the nuts and bolts of magazine production.

First off, authors, if they are paid at all, will be paid in proportion to the value of their contribution. LBSC might have been well paid, but he would hardly have been typical. The editor would know that an article or series from LBSC would make a big contribution to the popularity of the magazine and the loyalty of the readership, for which he would receive a good premium. Most authors - then as now - contribute to hobby/special interest publications because they want to, not to be paid. Contemporary authors may be paid, but I'm sure any cost-benefit analysis would show that the author of even a small construction project is working well below the minimum wage.

Second, where do magazines get their income? Advertising, newsstand revenue and subs. I don't have access to ME's circulation figures, but from all accounts they are not good - to the point where WH Smiths barely stocks it. Model engineering is a much smaller hobby than it used to be, much information can be sourced elsewhere and niche paper magazines are suffering. The size of advertising revenue is largely a reflection of the size and wealth of a magazine's audience and I imagine it has suffered with the decline of circulation.

(I think) ME used to have its own drawing department and even a workshop. I see little evidence of either now. In fact the standard of drawings is appalling. It ranges from the clinical, if neat and accurate, to the amateurish and ugly. The drawings used to be technical works of art; elegant, clear and a pleasure to read. Despite better paper and four-colour printing throughout, ME?s design is dreadful and the standard of some of the photography is abysmal. Almost every issue contains a pixelated photo because a contributor can?t understand a digital camera or worse, the layout staff failed to spot its low resolution.

I fear that ME is in a viscious circle. Its core audience is diminishing, the editor has relatively fewer resources, contributors are literally dying out, providing fewer and fewer meaty projects, further disenchanting a basically loyal readership. It?s little wonder they string out projects, they are probably having difficulty sourcing enough of them.

We all have our own ideas about what should and shouldn?t be in ME ? I?d like wall-to-wall steam engines and lots of good series on techniques, others will have their own preferences and the broad church aspect of ME is ultimately good for the hobby, but the quality has got to go up if it is to survive.

It?s easy to have rose-tinted glasses and say it was so much better when I was a lad, but from my (professional) eye I do think it?s not the magazine it used to be. I have some sympathy for the current editor, he?s got a tough job and it?s not getting any easier. But we won?t do him any favours by pretending all is well.

What to do?

1. Subscribe
2. Send in projects
3. Complain in your local newsagent if they don?t stock it ? it does make a difference

--Hi gang; have been unable to post for a few days. The thing that irks me no end about M.E. is that, if you go back and read some of the reeeeally old stuff, the zine was publishing plans for how to build functioning models of what was then state-of-the-art stuff. But with apologies for the (apparently) very large model RR fraternity, for the last 40 years or so it's been, except for the rare exception like the Quorn T&C grinder project, it's just been one damn locomotive after the other, with the occasional traction engine thrown in for variety. Nothing new and nothing new, so to speak. --Being less than a stellar letter writer and never seeming to have the time I've been meaning to rag on them via letter to the editor for years. Maybe I'll get crackin' on this before the opportunity vanishes for good.

"LBSC might have been well paid, but he would hardly have been typical"

What surprised me was that bog-standard articles such as the Band Sander written by occasional contributors earned =A31 a page as the going rate. On the 6d multiplier scale, todays' equivalent is =A33.75 x 40 a page -- =A3150. LBSC had a 50% premium -- very democratic!

The core problem has already been stated in part. Ageing contributors, ditto for subscribers. Death of manufacturing in the UK means less machining skills or experience, precious little technical education in schools, enough money to buy rather than make, & general loss of creative inititiative. House sizes & plots shrinking =3D loss of space for workshop. Public intolerance of noise/smells. Health & Safety / insurance paranoia. Even death of Fred hurts -- no real public champion of one-off engineering now visible.

Nasty mix =3D a dying interest in model engineering of the 5-year project type (or the full size 15-year rebuild). Ergo the core market for the present form of ME shrinks year on year.

LBSC (& early ME) was always good about running a goodly sprinkling of simple projects. He understood totally the need to involve youngsters in projects that gave them fast rewards in seeing something they created work.

Certainly no longer a cost issue. You can buy a decent start-up kit for a workshop for less than the cost of a fully-equipped PC with decent software. I've just been offered a big Monarch plus 2 South Bends, a shaper & a load of other stuff for PlayStation money.......

Colin

It's the space (or lack of it) that hurts!

Peter

-- Peter A Forbes Prepair Ltd, Luton, UK snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk

An interesting mix of issues which all have an impact on how many youngsters join the hobby. When I was younger (much) and starting out with model aircraft a much older guy invested hours of his time making sure that I had some success. He gave me sound advice and even loaned the necessary equipment at times. Other than a shared interest we had no connection and his consideration meant that we remained firm friends for 40 years until his sad death a few years ago. I'm not sure what people would think these days of a 40 year old spending many hours with a 14 year old playing with toy aeroplanes. A bit later in life (still a few years ago now) I couldn't find anyone who had time to help with practical advice and guidance when I started to get an interest in setting up a home workshop. Later still, and with the internet now available, I have had a good deal of excellent advice and help but it is not the same as having someone stood next to you saying - "thats a good start but I will show you an easier way to so that". With the current younger generation spending many hours on their pc I would have thought organisations like ME would have had an inspiring web site with projects (simple), basic techniques, competitions and lots and lots of pictures of others with their models. If there is one I have never found it.

I'm not sure if that is actually true, there must be thousands of projects started each year, it's just finished ones that get increasingly rare. With more time and money available the general standard of a 5 year project is way ahead of what it was in MEs' heyday. What we have is fewer individuals investing much longer in a project and creating masterpieces which inspire but ultimately frighten people away. How many times have you heard "its superb but way beyond my ability".

Couldn't agree more with this point. Many youngsters (or those not so young) develop an interest in Model Engineering through another active interest, model ac, cars, boats etc. The lack of general articles in ME is thus particularly damaging. I suspect that this is due to respecting the wishes of the current (staid?) readership who do not see the need to "waste" pages of an expensive magazine on simplistic articles or other subject that do not interst them (any more). Pity.

I don't believe that cost has been an issue for at least 20 years. If you inspire someone with a beautiful model and then tell them that it will take 5 years to finish, most will continue to drool and dream and go back to their playstation. Show them something interesting but simple that can be created in a few hours and they will have a go. Kids are no less creative now they just create different things. My son spends hours and hours (and =A3s and =A3s) creating and playing music, he has no interest whatsoever in models of any type so I know it is not easy to inspire even when you are trying hard. I suspect that when I was 14 the fact that my mentor was not my father was important in some way.

More long term investment in the communication channels that matter to the young and less short term "profit" management is what is needed by the likes of ME. I for one am not too hopeful.

Regards

Depressed Keith

I wonder what the average age of this thread is? ...... as in contributors rather than the thread itself!

I would guess the marketing people would put us all in the "subscription soon to expire" bracket.

Perhaps that has something to do with the decline?