176 replies to this topic

[RTH]

Elsewhere on ten tenths the Editor of 'Autosport' has announced that they are planning a complete re-design over the winter and seeks readers and ex-readers advice. Reported : -

Andrew van de Burgt :-

"We will be conducting some professional research into what the readers think of the current product and what they like and dislike, but given the number of current and former readers that post on this forum, I thought I'd seek your opinion on how you'd like Autosport to be. "


Where are we going to start ?

[alansart]

Originally posted by RTH
Where are we going to start ?

The Cover

[fines]

Strange that Autosport asks Ten Tenths readers for their opinion, but not its own forums...

How would I like Autosport to be? First of all, I'd like it to address an adult readership.

[Gregor Marshall]

Posting questions like that in the "Autosport" Atlas forum first maybe?

EDITED to add - Didn't see Fines post, DOH!!

[Stephen W]

I would like it to re-start covering the British Sprint Championship after all it still covers the British Hillclimb Championship and the sprint cars do the same thing as the hillclimbers but on race circuits and at a lot faster speeds!

I would also like to see more coverage of antipodean motorsport like it used to be in the 60s and 70s.

In fact why not just go back to covering the sport as Gregor Grant intended the magazine to do? I am sure the circulation was far greater then than it is now!

[johnwilliamdavies]

A lot less coverage of foreign racing and news. More coverage of grassroots UK motorsport. No interviews with drivers.





--------------------

Welsh Motor Sport History

[zakeriath]

Originally posted by fines
Strange that Autosport asks Ten Tenths readers for their opinion, but not its own forums...

How would I like Autosport to be? First of all, I'd like it to address an adult readership.

I think this is one of autosports problems, they generally assume that we are a captive readership and that we will read any old crap they put out. Just look at this weeks cover, its more like the Sun that a motoring magazine.

[KWSN - DSM]

Andrew van de Burgt would rather take a fight with us last time he asked here, which may be why he will not do so again.

In no particular order

Understand graphics

Drop the English flag when reporting

Make more in-depth articles.

Respect your readers.

Do not cater to the lowest common denominator.

Have the guts to accept that not all agree with you on what you do, without throwing a hissyfit when replying.

I expect that the magazine will not improve, and that it will possibly become worse.

[HDonaldCapps]

Originally posted by RTH
Elsewhere on ten tenths the Editor of 'Autosport' has announced that they are planning a complete re-design over the winter and seeks readers and ex-readers advice. Reported : -

Andrew van de Burgt :-

"We will be conducting some professional research into what the readers think of the current product and what they like and dislike, but given the number of current and former readers that post on this forum, I thought I'd seek your opinion on how you'd like Autosport to be. "

I have got to give van de Burgt credit for about the best laugh I have had so far today..... As Michael and Gregor were quick to point out, interesting that he did not float this past those on its own fora. Which, of course, does raise a few questions in and of itself.

Perhaps, as part of the re-design, he could arrange a deal for TNF to be traded off to, say, Motor Sport for instance. It would certainly seem to be a better "fit."

To use a phrase very much in use in the US press at the moment, "You can put lipstick on a pig, but...."

[Doug Nye]

There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with 'Autosport' that could not be put right by a complete redesign, rethink, rebrand, rejig, repaint, rebuild and relaunch.

DCN

[Richard Jenkins]

I'm tempted to say just start from scratch, sack a lot of the no-brained monkeys who work there & employ genuine motorsport writers or at least fans of the sport but:

The three main ones:
Make the magazine readable for anybody over the age of 10.
Like every other media outlet in the UK, get your head & tongues out of Lewis Hamilton's arse.
Stop trying to be a motorsport extension of the Daily Star (or National Enquirer for our US readers)

More constructively:
A proper results section, maybe in the middle of the magazine (a la World Soccer), which could cover F1 right down to HSCC etc - this way the rather ludicrous situation of having a full magazine, but half of it featuring on the race just gone and the race to come would be gone.

The above would also allow for a bit more guest columns, interviews & focus on other sports - it is AutoSPORT, not AutoF1, after all.

[RTH]

Originally posted by Doug Nye
There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with 'Autosport' that could not be put right by a complete redesign, rethink, rebrand, rejig, repaint, rebuild and relaunch.

DCN

........Yeah, but what about the terrible paper they use Doug !


What I would say is first learn some lessons from history, look back at the periods when the circulation was really high, pull out the back numbers from those periods and have a look at them .From that you will get some clues as to what is attractive to motor racing enthusiasts.

Before we even start on the writing, the look of the magazine,..... it is badly laid out, the font type and size is quite wrong, it is literally difficult to read.
Far, far too much colour and a lot of it is red, it bleeds over from one piece to another.

Don't ever print text on to coloured paper or put text over photographs , its horrible, if its a chore to try and read people will not bother its cheap nasty and senseless. Layout is truly awful.
Text should be black print on white paper and nothing else and Times Roman font is popular because it is easy to read and looks a high quality finished product, look no further.

Don't print these huge full or half page photos that convey no information ,a six inch square photo of someones forehead is a waste of everyone's time and money, so is a tiny blurred car and half a page of blue sky . Photo choice, size and layout has been dreadful for many years now.

I am someone who subscribed continuously from 1967 right up until 5 years ago when opening it became intolerable . Above all it should be a weekly news magazine on what has just happened and what is about to happen on the motor sport scene. Over the last 5 years I have bought the odd copy in a supermarket in the feint hope that it might have been through some transformation ....it never has !

The lineage classifieds used to be a fascinating read in their own right and THE market place for buying and selling racing cars and parts... not now, its pathetic now since you sent advertising rates sky high and choked off the very people who often bought it just for the classifieds.

Then there is the writing ....At school an English teacher would go through essays with a red pen and cross out the waffle, apply that quite correct editing to 'Autosport' now and there would not be much at all on each page.

There is so much wrong with it. Get out some copies from the 1970s and 1980s it was far and away the finest motor racing publication money could buy, for me at present it is now the worst. Perhaps what you ought to do is meet people who buy motoring and motor sport publications and bring a very big notepad.

[llmaurice]

Starting with just a few small things -
Stop advertising great gin palaces such as the ex Ferrari hospitality unit and ridiculously oversize transporters etc.
Remove the adverts for mainly F1 staff wanted.
Make ordinary classified adverts reasonably price so we don't just see the same old adverts week after week .
If the three items are addressed ,the resulting 5 empty pages could be filled with Motorsport news such as fuller reports on the nuts and bolts of club and National racing instead of every last piece of new aero used by F1 cars at the last round . Keep the F1 reports but use adult journalists to compile them
Maybe ,a look at Autosport as we knew and loved it when the last 3 pages were full of genuine racing cars for sale would give some inspiration.
I could go on but let someone with better literate skills take up the finer points .

[Charles E Taylor]

Autosport

AH:-

Autosport , might best be described by reference to Frank Zappa’s famous quote. (go look)

There is as much passion for the sport in the writing as there is in the F1 Paddock.



Bring back Pete Lyons.







"What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure."
-- Samuel Johnson






Charlie

[petefenelon]

Originally posted by fines
Strange that Autosport asks Ten Tenths readers for their opinion, but not its own forums...

How would I like Autosport to be? First of all, I'd like it to address an adult readership.

Well the RC would no doubt want it to be like the late unlamented Rally XS, we all seem to prefer the Green'un (even if we love to hate it), the Technical Forum lot don't care 'cos it's not Race Tech or Racecar Engineering, the Racing Simulators lot don't give a toss if it can't do 1080p50 graphics! ;P

It's very interesting that unlike the last time Autosport tried this (under John McIlroy, when McIlroy was roasted alive by the Ten Tenths mob for basically saying the readers were wrong for wanting the mag they wanted, AvdB is keeping his own counsel on it. And this time even more readers and ex-readers are saying "less contemporary F1 please".

Bernieworld coverage apart, Autosport has improved a lot over the last few years. Nowhere near as good as it was in the 70s/80s/early 90s, but much better than it had been recently. I think a few lessons struck home circa the Greatest Crashes supplement.

[petefenelon]

Originally posted by Charles E Taylor
Autosport

AH:-

Autosport , might best be described by reference to Frank Zappa’s famous quote. (go look)

There is as much passion for the sport in the writing as there is in the F1 Paddock.


Charlie

Or another Zappa quote - "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

[Kemmel]

Too much F1, why not more WRC, LMS, FIA GT or WTCC.
And less of that formula football crap!!!

[Hieronymus]

Originally posted by RTH


Before we even start on the writing, the look of the magazine,..... it is badly laid out, the font type and size is quite wrong, it is literally difficult to read.
Far, far too much colour and a lot of it is red, it bleeds over from one piece to another.

Don't ever print text on to coloured paper or put text over photographs , its horrible, if its a chore to try and read people will not bother its cheap nasty and senseless. Layout is truly awful.

It reminds me of a hyper active child that switched his Ritalin for LSD by mistake.

[Ian Smith - Diz]

Simple. Show the powers that be copies of the magazine when people like Ian Titchmarsh contributed proper race reports of National and Club racing, people like Ian Phillips edited and the magazine was full of proper writing with some photos. Nowadays large photos are just a lazy way of filling space without having to write anything.
Then using a thirty odd year old model the magazine could be relaunched and people - enthusiasts - would start buying it again
Leave big F1 coverage to their sister publication for the brain deads who say things like "I don't go to Oulton Park, Lydden Hill, Cadwell Park etc.,to watch as Formula One is my sport"
The tabloids can cover the Hamilton mania
If something was done I, and many like me, would restart their long cancelled subscriptions.


And going totally off topic. Why don't Ferrari just say that they disagree with the Stewards Hamilton decision and as entrants in a sport they don't want to achieve victories this way, so please give the winner his 25 seconds back.

[sprite]

How to fix Autosport ?
Look at teen fan magazines..........don't do that.

[stevewf1]

I'll speak for the on-line version here. They could get rid of those intrusive Circuit City ads...

[john t]

Autosport. Is it still going? I stopped reading it when it adopted a tabloid style of presentation and binned its in depth reporting in favour of Sun style titbits for people of limited concentration. Put it out of its misery please...

[David Force]

I suspect that TNFers are not the readership being chased by Autosport these days and, perhaps, therein lies their difficulty. The 'Lads Mag' type of reader they seem to be pitching at has the concentration span of a dragon fly and most probably gets the information required on the various team web pages.

Those of us who can recall, as others have pointed out, the writings of GG, JVB, Pete Lyons etc are probably not remotely the target readership. After all the youngsters who write the Magazine these days mostly seem to dismiss the pre Schumacher era as being either not interesting or, worse, non existent...

So, Autosport will need to look carefully at the long, difficult, but ultimately successful metamorphosis which Motor Sport went through and learn from their mistakes.

But, absolutely, no white print out of black pages. The old eyes simply will not deal with it any more.

[ErleMin]

Yep - wrong type font; adverts at the back please; more foreign stuff - UK successes in club racing in Europe are unreported; and a TNF page.

[LotusElise]

From the outside in:
clean up the messy, confusing and garish covers, for a start.
Find a clear, accessible and consistent layout. It's not boring to do this, it's part of branding and makes things much more pleasant to read.
Acknowledge the world outside F1 - more WRC, ALMS, touring cars and national racing/rallying.
Keep the photography to quality action shots, which help to tell the story in the race reports.
A section for National motorsport reports, with results, in the middle, is a great idea.
While the readership is probably mainly male, do not alienate your female readership with pointless pictures of grid girls. There are enough magazines catering for this type of interest about.

Someone mentioned the dreadful RallyXS upthread. They should look at that and see how NOT to do a motorsport magazine.

[Gregor Marshall]

Originally posted by ErleMin
Yep - wrong type font; adverts at the back please; more foreign stuff - UK successes in club racing in Europe are unreported; and a TNF page.

As a start that gets a vote from me!!

[Formula Once]

Stop asking silly questions on the cover and start to provide answers (Autosport I mean, not you).

[JtP1]

Originally posted by Richie Jenkins
I'm tempted to say just start from scratch, sack a lot of the no-brained monkeys who work there & employ genuine motorsport writers or at least fans of the sport but:

The three main ones:
Make the magazine readable for anybody over the age of 10.
Like every other media outlet in the UK, get your head & tongues out of Lewis Hamilton's arse.
Stop trying to be a motorsport extension of the Daily Star (or National Enquirer for our US readers)

More constructively:
A proper results section, maybe in the middle of the magazine (a la World Soccer), which could cover F1 right down to HSCC etc - this way the rather ludicrous situation of having a full magazine, but half of it featuring on the race just gone and the race to come would be gone.

The above would also allow for a bit more guest columns, interviews & focus on other sports - it is AutoSPORT, not AutoF1, after all.

As another former reader, I must wholely agree with these points. I stopped reading it about 2 revamps ago. I simply got fed up with Roebuck's weekly anti Schumacher tirade and the fact that what I watched on the haunted fish tank on Sunday, bore little relation to what I read on Thursday. It also became near to reading the "Beano". "Motorsport" became like that years ago and simply revamped what had been printed years before in an attempt to inform readers, often wrongly, of what had happened in previous years.

These questionaires are the usual desperate attempt by editors faced with falling circulation, who don't know what to do next. Resignation from editorship, might be a good start. Unfortunately there is a tendency of the lunatic fringe to be in the majority in replying to the questionaire and the magazine follows suit. For the older posters, "Car & Conversions" of the late 60s is a perfect example.

So if this is the way forward planned, any of you still buying Autosport might be better advised to cancel your subscription and ask for a refund asap.

[Formula Once]

At least they won't be shouting that this will be Coulthard's year anymore...

[kayemod]

Originally posted by JtP1


I simply got fed up with Roebuck's weekly anti Schumacher tirade ...

One of the reasons I kept my subscription going as long as I did.

[Derwent Motorsport]

I haven't bought Autosport for years, but I still get Motoring News after about 40 years but I do ask myself why?
It does seem that in both magazines, the editors don't do any research. For example I would think that the amount of space given to reports would be in proportion to the spectator attendance. But compare MSN's coverage of Goodwood with its coverage of a F3/GT meeting.
MSN will report road rallies with 25 entries but not cover hill climbs and sprints with a 100 to 150 entries.

I think in both cases it's also a money and peanuts situation. Loads of young lads out of uni with a vague interest in cars get the job for about £10K a year. Over the years I've rung both mags to try and get coverage for our events and have been appalled at the lack of knowledge of the sport and geography of these lads. The current MSN "Sporting Scene" editor (are they all editors?) can barely speak English!

[john aston]

Less F1 - and less Mark Hughes reflections on some of the so not fascinating strategic issues of same.

Less coverage of the Uruguyan pickup superstar championship etc

More coverage of UK motorsport - including sprinting, drag racing and club rallying.

Some decent in depth pieces by people who can write about the sport- and I have to say that what other people think about Kimi Raikkonen ('we reveal the real Kimi' in last week's issue) does not remotely interest me

No tedious Nascar - if I lived in a trailer park in West Virginia I'd be fascinated (if I could read) but as I don't I'm not.

A move away from their editorial stance that people who watch lots of motor sport on TV are enthusiasts- they aren't - they are just people who watch too much TV and don't get off their lazy arses to watch live sport.

An end - immediately and for ever - to those tedious pieces speculating who will win the next GP and why.

Less pictures and more words- and I don't need pictures of scantily clad lovelies- do they realise how dated that looks ?

BUT - I do applaud their brave decision actually to address environmental issues in the Sport- wish they weren't there but at least they are not in denial about it.

[Cirrus]

I've only just come across this thread, and haven't had tme to read it from the top, so if I'm repeating what others have already said, then I apologise. I stopped getting Autosport every week nearly ten years ago, but my 78 year-old father still subscribes (he's had it every week since the first issue), and passes it on to me.

I think that there has been a marked improvement in recent issues. The reprints of old GP reports has been very welcome, and interviews with people like Gordon Spice made interesting reading. Maybe they are waking up to the fact that there is a large potential market of former readers who might be enticed back by decent articles with more words, less outsized pictures and fewer Shock! Horror! headlines.

[kayemod]

Originally posted by john aston

Less pictures...

Fewer.

But apart from that, I agree with every single word.

[sterling49]

Originally posted by john aston

More coverage of UK motorsport - including sprinting, drag racing and club rallying.

They used to be so good at this back in the day, most Rallies, PCTs, Autotests and Sprints were covered, sometimes with photos

[JimInSoCalif]

Wow - sounds like a lot of changes should be made. I don't have a dog in this fight because I don't read the publication due to my locatation, but I would say that any Art Director that uses reversed white text with a colored background, or even worse, with a photo as a background should be shot.

I thought that might be something that only our auto magazines did. I have seen it in every motoring magazine I have read and it is so hard to read, that I don't even try. I hope they make they changes that you folks want.

Cheers, Jim.

[fbarrett]

Living in the U.S., where Autosport subs are now mucho $$$, I no longer subscribe, but hundreds of issues from the 1960s and 1970s lie resting on the shelves here. Having also spent 25 years as a magazine editor/publisher, I realize that any magazine that asks its readers for such suggestions is a) completely lost or b) doing so only as a token gesture. They are much more likely to listen to their expensive editorial and publishing consultants! Magazines, like car makers, often pay far too much attention to "customer clinics" when they should simply be creative and innovative themselves.

Given the sorry financial state of the magazine business these days, don't expect much from any redesign. The internet has stolen not only the immediacy of weeklies but also, more tellingly, their advertising income and quality contributors.

Frank

[IrishMariner]

Magazine buyers want something to READ.

Look at how 'WORD' magazine tackled the music magazine giants such at 'Q'. Articles of decent length written by knowledgable people and a few well chosen pictures.
The internet can provide all the pics of glossy cars that anyone wants. In fact, by the time autosport comes out, the results of the F1 race are already well covered online.

When I was 11, I used to get Autosport when i was away on holiday and had money to spend. It did not matter that the issues were weeks old, there was something to read. I also remember that my first Autosport had a Tony Matthews cutaway in it - Gold for a budding draftsman!

Throughout my high-school years, I used to get my mum to buy the magazine for me and she did regularly, even if there was little money to spare in the household budget - A fact I was selfishly unaware of (good parents I had). It was only with the advent of Racecar Engineering and RaceTech that Autosport became dispensable to me. Now in the US, the magazine is stupid expensive for a weekly and I only get the end-of year double issue. The last few years Christmas issues have been an utter disgrace with zero to recommend them.

[john aston]

Originally posted by kayemod


Fewer.

But apart from that, I agree with every single word.

Mortified - I will now write 500 lines.And I am the one -of many- who rants about supermarket signs saying 10 items or less. I was tired, I had drunk strong tea mea culpa

[Darren Galpin]

I also think that Autosport has improved this year, with much more complete results for sportscar racing etc than in the past couple of years. But I would take issue with a couple of points - the magazine is Autosport, not British Autosport, although it is published in the UK and obviously has (and should have) a UK bias, hence the club section at the back. Hence it should cover the major world championships, and despite what Mr Aston thinks, NASCAR is a major championship and as such should be covered. Why is NASCAR any less deserving than the DTM? It should be covering in passing minor championships such as "the Uruguyan pickup superstar championship" as it is from these championships that drivers progress to larger championships such as GT's. As mentioned elsewhere, people enjoy reading back issues and seeing how drivers have progressed from lower formulae, and if you don't cover them, then you won't be able to do this in future.

I would also suggest that some people get an older issue and a newer issue, put them side by side and then go through them together, comparing what is really there to what is actually remembered. I can't speak for older Autosport's as I haven't read them, but having looked through old Motorsport magazine's I can't say that I always recognise what people are describing. Some of it matches, but the whole magazine certainly doesn't match what people put forward.

Yes, I find the new section of Autosport sometimes tiresome and repetitive, repeating what is also stated in a later article. But I also think that you need to give Autosport a bit of a break and remember the age in which you are living. The Autosport that many state that you love was published in a time when there were few other sources, and it might have been the only way that many could follow the sport - there was not much TV coverage, little on the radio or in the press, and few other magazines. Most of us now will have seen a full race, read and listened to countless opinion's from "experts" on radio, TV and in the newspapers before Autosport arrives on our doorstep to describe the same thing - therefore a lot of it is now "old news" and repeating what you know. Autosport cannot go back to being what it was in the 1960s, as it is no longer the first source of information, and it has to compete with all of the websites that you read. This does not mean that it cannot improve - if it is going to mention that infamous Uruguyan championship, then I wish that it would then mention every round, rather than certain rounds as and when it feels like it, so that it can be a proper journal of record.

There are pet hates though. Why is it that every F1 driver interview states that F1 drivers are all bland corporate speak types apart from the one they are interviewing?

Now rapidly ducking for cover and expecting incoming rounds......

[john aston]

Well here is the first- most Uruguyan etc championships are contested by the likes of Ingo Hoffman and other nearly men;if you are interested in following there is plenty on the web.What I object to is editorial space being given to this dross at the expense of what is happening in UK- and it is a magazine which first and foremost is for UK enthusiasts despite the mag's aspirations to be the internationally definitive voice of the sport. Poor old Marcus Pye gets about 4 pages to compress 99% of UK sport into- when double that is devoted to some NASCAR crashfest in Hicksville North Carolina I have a problem . I have read Autosport since early 70s and - sorry - it WAS much better then with a sense of proportion about "Eff one"'s importance

[Darren Galpin]

Agreed that less space could be devoted to F1 "news", and I also agree that the club section at the back could be bigger. I don't quite see why we label Brazilian Stock Cars as being dross and for nearly men when the DTM is no different, just based in Europe.

[Gregor Marshall]

I agree with pretty much all of the things mentioned above and do realise it’s difficult to please everyone but the main thing that gets my goat is the lack of depth and accuracy on various bits.
Two examples that spring to mind are forgetting various people's birthdays/passings - why have that section and then pick and choose some bloke from the Uruguyan pickup superstar championship (I like that quote - thank you Mr Aston) and forget a birthday or passing. That’s not just my late father (which did p me off!!)but I have noticed other people’s that they have missed too.
The second example is the one time I was asked to comment on a recent story they wanted to run they ignored everything I said, ran “their” story and then had complaints and had to publish an apology - why bother asking in the first place??!!
It just seems to me that each issue is thrown together with no time taken to research the stories, just regurgitate various global items that we could read anywhere and from what they write about the UK Club scene they don’t seem to research the stories in-depth; which has just reminded me of what I read about the very unfortunate and sad accident that happened to Andy Neate at Silverstone last weekend. Instead of asking official sources they ran a story quoting a comment made on a web forum; what is that about (would you trust what you read on TNF?? ). Anyone could have posted the particular information and I'm sure the person who posted it (was who they said but that’s not the point) would have preferred to have been contacted directly and for Autosport to offer it's support rather then just be quoted out of the ether.
Rant over now!!

[LotusElise]

I quite like the little bits of news from the far-flung corners of the world of motorsport. Or I did when I used to read the magazine.

[JtP1]

Around the time I stopped reading Autosport, most of the items seemed to be assembled from that week's press releases from wanabe teams and drivers.

[HiRich]

What I find surprising (and disappointing) is how many of us have given up completely on the magazine after years, decades of buying it religiously.

It's not like we've defected to another source for general, contemporary motorsport coverage. There's no magazine that does what Autosport is suppsed to do, and only a partial patchwork of websites & RSS feeds. Disillusionment with the state of "Effwon" is certainly part of it (and compounded by Autosport's overt fascination with it, to the exclusion of other interests), but many of us seem to still be interested in other areas (be it NASCAR, IRL, LM, etc., etc.).

Many of us seem to have decided that the value is far below the cover price. And with no true substitute, we've decided to fine tune our interests (such as coming here), or just living without. Strikes me that Haymarket have abandoned their core loyalists (and values) in search of new customers - never a good marketing plan.

I'd continue with my own views on what's needed, but ultimately do I think they'd listen, and do I really care anymore?

[KWSN - DSM]

Originally posted by HiRich
What I find surprising (and disappointing) is how many of us have given up completely on the magazine after years, decades of buying it religiously.

It's not like we've defected to another source for general, contemporary motorsport coverage. There's no magazine that does what Autosport is suppsed to do, and only a partial patchwork of websites & RSS feeds. Disillusionment with the state of "Effwon" is certainly part of it (and compounded by Autosport's overt fascination with it, to the exclusion of other interests), but many of us seem to still be interested in other areas (be it NASCAR, IRL, LM, etc., etc.).

Many of us seem to have decided that the value is far below the cover price. And with no true substitute, we've decided to fine tune our interests (such as coming here), or just living without. Strikes me that Haymarket have abandoned their core loyalists (and values) in search of new customers - never a good marketing plan.

I'd continue with my own views on what's needed, but ultimately do I think they'd listen, and do I really care anymore?

You are correct, and it I think what we all struggle to understand. We were paying customers for many many years, I exceed 25 in total. And they show no interest at all in holding on to certain well paying customers, rather they run for the casual reader who may or may not turn in to what a lot of us used to be.

Subscription holders for many years.

The overall number of weekly magazines they make have gone way down from their highs, I would have to find the details, but somewhere I remember 60.000 now being 35.000, why this does not indicate that we are correct in our views on what used to be / what is no more, I am not certain.

I do know that a couple of times variouos Editors have been on here, but instead of trying a debate, they turned it into a question of what is wrong with us.

I understand that the internet have changed how a magazine is produced, but would suggest that the answer is not fluff, but rather in-depth articles on what goes on beside the races. And then the usual comment that they need to understand graphics, and how not to use them.

[Stephen W]

Originally posted by KWSN - DSM

You are correct, and it I think what we all struggle to understand. We were paying customers for many many years, I exceed 25 in total. And they show no interest at all in holding on to certain well paying customers, rather they run for the casual reader who may or may not turn in to what a lot of us used to be.

Subscription holders for many years.

The overall number of weekly magazines they make have gone way down from their highs, I would have to find the details, but somewhere I remember 60.000 now being 35.000, why this does not indicate that we are correct in our views on what used to be / what is no more, I am not certain.

I do know that a couple of times variouos Editors have been on here, but instead of trying a debate, they turned it into a question of what is wrong with us.

I understand that the internet have changed how a magazine is produced, but would suggest that the answer is not fluff, but rather in-depth articles on what goes on beside the races. And then the usual comment that they need to understand graphics, and how not to use them.

As I said in an earlier post they need to return to the core values espoused by the founder. I agree totally that Autosport "could" provide in-depth analysis that is currently not available on the 'interweb'. In fact what I have seen of motor sport coverage on-line is that apart from the immediacy it offers the weekly magazine is far more preferable as it provides better comments, reports and photographs. The magazine option is also better as a more easily accessible format given the pathetic sort facilities some sites provide.

Currently I am spending my money on EBAY building up my back-catalogue of copies of Autosport rather than buying the current product. I do occasionally conceed and buy a current copy but only when I have any of my photographs published!

[Derwent Motorsport]

Both AS and MSN seem to use far too many press releases from unknown Formula "something" drivers on the lines of " Rising FS star Melvyn Whatnot has gained sponsorship for the next two rounds of the FS Championship from Porky Pies Ltd", which is of no interest to anyone other than Melvyn and his dad who owns Porky Pies!
Over the years I've sent in numerous press releases about events and clubs etc and they rarely get used.

[john aston]

And this week's edition epitomises the problem- relentless talking up of the utterly tedious Singapore GP- 'this is new direction of F1', 'Europe much to learn ', ' New Monaco' etc. Sorry - what I saw was an utterly forgettable track with silly kerbs and more bumps than the road to my house.Not a single named corner, no overtaking opportunities to speak of and bugger all to see because it was..errm ...dark. I realise that if they dare to criticise The Man will ..dunno...remove their accreditation ? but FFS I really am tired of this Emperor's New Clothes rubbish.Give me 10 minutes of Spa or Suzuka or Brands or Kyalami than this parody.