Hmm this is interesting... Getting enough stuff to fill the pages. Here at Rimmer News the challenge is what you leave out. We always have too much stuff but then we are a B2B rather than newsstand.
No doubt about it, there is an awful lot going on in the industry right now (...my next job this morning – when I stop Prooning – is to re-write part of an article following the US govts refusal of UA loan guarantee application...exciting eh?).
HWD you are bang on...
Publishing lesson 101: All mags get most of their revenue from advertising - it's true subcriptions and newsstand sales are the smaller piece of the pie. Advertising that's where the loot is. Advertisers spend their money where they think it'll doo em most good (Duh...right). Ok, so if you look at the advertising in the bulk of GA mags, you'll see that in the main they cater to (gasp) people who don't fly but want to - kinda tells you why there are so many flight school ads.
Next why do manufacturers allow nurks like me to come and play with their shiney new whizz jet or whizz prop?
Answer: They think it might help flog a few – gawd knows why (but I'm glad they do). I'm quite sure nobody in a fleet planning dept reads my pearls of...er wisd...well comments... and thinks "Oo-er we must get straight out and buy some Megaplanes 75s.).
Same deal in the GA mags. With new kit they get everybody down to do the Flight test bit pretty much one after the other to raise the profile of their newly certified mold breaking, paradigm shifting mega plastic Super Flyer. Which is why they all seem to have the same thing on the cover (beats me why they don't umm sequence... guess they don't talk to each other?)
Or when an owner lets some journo get his sweaty paws on his or her superrare smokin-grinder it's usually because he or she has had enough of the damn thing and wants rid. Why is anybody surprised with the subsequent ad?
Fly Stim. : Yer not wrong there...please no more John Nicol 'Flies' (which should be John Nichol has a ride in.... Bring back Brendan O'Brien, at least that bu@@er CAN fly).