Goodbye PC Mag Philippines
Posted Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 9:09 am by Abe Olandres
Viewed 4550 times | Related entries: Personal Computing, Tech News
William Yu reports that local magazine PC Mag Philippines will be suspended indefinitely. This is primarily due to low ad sales and high licensing fees forced Hinge Inquirer Publications to stop printing/distribution of the tech magazine.
Hinge Inquirer Publications regretfully announces the indefinite suspension of publication of PC Magazine Philippines under our aegis effective February 2007. Another tech mag, Game Master was also discontinued last year after 3 years in circulation.
Despite being the number one tech magazine in the country in terms of readership, the financial burden of the high monthly licensing fee from Ziff-Davis Media Inc., owner of the title, negates most of the local revenue we generate from advertising. Our company has maintained this difficult setup for the past two years and has tirelessly worked to achieve exceptional sales performance month after month in order to turn a small profit. But the licensing fees and other factors have made continuing PC Magazine financially untenable for HIP.
A few of us here at PTB have contributed an article or two to PC Mag and it’s a surprise to learn that the top tech magazine in the Philippines will be out of circulation.
A bigger question pops — is the local magazine industry dying?
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9 Responses to “Goodbye PC Mag Philippines”
Maybe the writers could do a Newsbreak and try setting up an online version of a tech magazine… the main overhead would probably salaries
“is the local magazine industry dying?”
I doubt it. FHM and other men’s magazines all seem to be doing fine. Same with glam magazines. And of course there’s the neverending stream of gossip and celeb mags that you see in beauty parlors. PC Magazine’s demise is not indicative of any general trend.
I don’t read the local PC Mag anyway, half of the content are months-old reprints from PC Mag USA.
Maybe they should revive the PC Magazine Blog.
Then of course there’s PWiT – some people in PWiT are from HIP.
As for the industry… the men’s and women’s mags are fine since the readers are not Internet users in general… for a tech mag, they can just go online, head to PTB (or PWiT), or visit ZDNet, Cnet…
Hmmm… I am not surprised.
I got some of the issues of this mag, and I also thought that it’s probably not cost-effective to be licensing a foreign-brand tech magazine when maybe a local mag can be produced and marketed. And some of the articles there were really for a US-based reader (and written by US-based authors). I think HIP should develop its own tech magazine just like some locally produced home-style mags—there are a number of them that seem to be successful–proof: they’re still here (already more than 3 years). These mags can relate more with Filipino readers and consumers–prices are in pesos, and featured stuff can be bought here–unlike in the foreign mags! Furthermore, doing an all-local mag means production cost will be cheaper cuz there is no more licensing fee.
off-topic
Is there a Pinoy tech forum or maybe a web 2.0 forum?
With the throne vacant in the tech magazine category, who will take up the challenge? Are there any challengers? Or has the web ironically removed from circulation one of the magazines that have helped made it popular? I still remember the old Yahoo! magazines…
As I see it, only BABES+GADGETS win in this market. If HIP will make another tech (pinoy/locally made) magazine –i think it will look EXACTLY like the Mobile Philippines – only its not just mobile but all of tech.
Jomar
The thing that people need to understand here is that the reason the local Mags are dying is primarily due to the content. Most of the content of local IT mags contain copied, or sourced, content from the parent publication. If a local mag were to be successful, we will need all original content, reviews by local people and trends that we currently have in the Philippines and not some western country.
If I wanted to read about the trends from the west, I’d just read stick to my RSS feeds from their websites, but if I wanted to see what’s happening on the local scene, where do I turn to?
Just use FHM as an example, almost all content are local to the Philippines, why can’t tech mags be the same?
Exactly.
That’s why I believe what I heard sometime: that PC Buyer’s Guide Philippines was leading.
It’s not a magazine, but it contains useful local info — prices.
[...] February last year, we was reported that PC Mag Philippines will stop publication and early this year, parent company Ziff-Davis filed [...]
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