Its very similar to the world of motoring journalism. The magazine price covers the costs of production, distribution, taxes and retailers profit. The profit and pay of the journalists comes entirely from the ad revenue.
Now if you look at historical relationships between a car makers reviews and a car makers magazine advertising spend you will see a correlation. In effect the car magazines have a gun to the manufacturers heads as they have x-100thousand potential customers reading and believing their opinions.
For example. Post 1990 Porsche was losing money and cut back on its magazine advertising. For the next few years the 911 became 'eclipsed' the 928 was slagged mercilessly and the 944/968 never got anything but lukewarm praise for the niche race models. Then Porsche started spending on ads - big time. You will now rarely pick up a copy of Autocar, Top Gear or Evo without finding Porsche having the first page doble page glossy as adspace. The most expensive real estate in the ad business. If not the front two pages they will be in number two position on the back page. Their spend is huge. For each car they sell they outspend a rival such as BMW by 8 times.
You've not read a bad review of their products for some years now.
Peugeot cut down its level of magazine ad spending and I doubt you've read a good review since.
With this in mind you have to remember that flying magazines work just the same. Garmin never get a bad review do they? Ever seen a flying mag say that Breitlings are overpriced technically mediocre watches viewed by many people as a cliche to be avoided? Of course you haven't - that back page "Breitling NaviSpaceAdventure" is paying the Editors mortgage.
So the chances of you finding in the magazines a well balanced factually researched article about the pros and CONS of attending OATS or FTE Jerez or CABAIR are frankly pretty small indeed.
Given that the debate on these forums for night on 8 years has raged about the choice of Integrated or Modular (509 vs Self Improver before 1999) it is wonderous that no magazine has ever run such a feature. Why not get two journalists on two pages arguing for one of the two options? It would be a good read, easily written and highly useful to its readers...
But it will never happen.
Cheers
WWW
ps - Go Modular, save £25k, you'll still get a job in this market and with the saving you can pick up a Boxster S and then be a real airline pilot in your very first year!
