NEWS: Chris GoreÂ’s Footage Fetishes: No More Premiere in the U.S.A.

CULTURE: Chris Gore’s Footage Fetishes: No More Premiere in the U.S.A.

I am a media junkie. In fact, I used to subscribe to more than 50 magazines. Everything from movie mags to technology to video games to porn magazines arrived at my door step and I greeted every arrival with the urge to get my media fix. Premiere magazine was one of the many mags I looked forward to devouring each month and now itÂ’s dead.


Premiere magazine has shut its doors in the U.S.

This week, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. announced that due to decreasing print ad revenue, the magazine would no longer be published and would continue as an online-only publication. Hey, join the club.

Ten years ago, I decided to shut down Film Threat magazine myself and I have to admit that it was a painful decision. So, perhaps I know how some of those folks feel at Premiere right about now. When I ceased publishing Film Threat, the idea was that weÂ’d create a web site as a way to continue to write about movies and then return some day to print. After having built an audience online who enjoys what we do, I would never consider returning to the world of print for several reasons:

1) Speed to market. If something important happens on the internet in the next 30 seconds, I can write about it on my site and youÂ’d know about it. In the world of national print magazines, that window of time is about six days. For monthly magazines like Premiere, the time period is almost six weeks and, on long lead feature stories, it can be months. In a world of consumers trained to consume data at a feverish pace, six weeks is a lifetime.
2) Catering to mainstream tastes. One thing I found fascinating about working on magazines were the odd rules that distributors seemed to adhere to. For example, all magazine covers must contain a recognizable face shot in a way as to be looking directly at the reader. The idea being that the subject was making eye contact with the potential buyer. And the movie/celeb had to be recognizable. For me, that was incredibly limiting – especially when my preference was to write about obscure underground films rather than the latest Tom Cruise movie.
3) Limitations of the medium. Print is confined by the number of pages contained within the magazine itself. 100 pages of print means that, well, thatÂ’s it. Once those 100 pages are filled, thereÂ’s no more room. Stories must be limited in size, so nothing is liable to go over 5,000 words. If you want depth, read a book. Or if you want to explore a topic, go to a library. The beauty of the web is that there is not limit in terms of length or depth. Read into that what you will.
4) Waste. When I first began working in the print magazine business, I remember being shocked at the amount of waste. I was told that a 30% sell-through rate was considered a huge success, meaning, if a publisher printed 100,000 magazines, and only 30,000 sold, that magazine was a hit. And the 70,000 magazines that did not sell were thrown out or returned to be destroyed, or, hopefully, recycled. I remember feeling incredibly guilty about all the trees that were needlessly destroyed in the interests of making that quota of magazines shipped.

When Film Threat closed its doors ten years ago, we shut down along with a slew of what were considered “counter-culture” magazines such as The Nose from San Francisco. This wave of alt-mags going under was not due to decreasing ad pages, but simply the price of paper. (And don’t get me started on hemp. If the U.S. government would simply allow hemp to be more widely used in the process of making magazines and newspapers, this replenishable resource would see print return at an affordable rate.)

The only thing I can say to Premiere and the hard-working staffers isÂ… I feel terrible and... what took you so long?

Gore gone.

Chris_Gore is an author, a filmmaker, the creator of Film Threat, and prefers his media paperless. NOTE: Gore is on a plane to the Film and Music Festival, so expect a full report next week.

Just a question here,

Is it six months or six weeks, Im assuming weeks, but wasn't sure from how this was phrased?

Bah, I literally just got my first issue of Premiere from a free subscription the day they announced this.

I can't wait for cell phone technology to get better, so we can still have outlets for Filmthreat, Premiere, etc... for times when sitting in front of a computer is not an option. I know "print is dead", but the internet isn't a complete replacement yet.

Wow, that scared the shit out of me for a second... Premiere has always been a leading cinema/media magazine to me but I am really glad to hear they are just refocussing on their online product. Even if they choose to go into a PDF version of the magazine for sales it would be incredible. The interactivity of that medium can be greatly utilized for a magazine like them. You can have anything going on, from live links to websites, motion graphics for advertisers, video clips, and rollover layers all in one little publication. Talk about taking print to the next level. Gotta love it.

JP

Many of the alt zines that went out of business a decade ago seemed to blame distributors-- especially Fine Print. Production costs were a concern as well, but that whole "not getting paid by distributors" problem hit quite a few publishers hard.

Anyway.

Your breakdown of publishing problems is interesting-- I know a few people working for various publications, and the problems you mention are widespread, impacting more than Hollywood rags. The waste problem is especially onerous; magazine and paperback book publishers have done this for years, with 80%+ of published runs destroyed (not recycled). It's good that this is being seen as a problem now; if environmental concerns won't move companies, at least financial concerns will. I'd be willing to lose a bit of variety at the newsstand if it means more environmentally-responsible publishing practices. (Granted, this isn't the fault of publishers so much as it is of distributors, who require a set number of copies per location, regardless of sell-through.)

I've had five magazines to which I subscribe send me their death notices in the last few months... It'll be interesting to see where magazines go in the next few years. Much is made of the problem newspapers face as "new media" begins to take over, but it seems to be hitting the niche periodicals much harder.

Yes, it is six weeks. Though, when planning stories long terms, being six months out or planning an annual calendar is key. Thanks for the correction, I updated the piece.

I've subscribed to Newsweek for more than 10 years and I just don't read it anymore, so I've cancelled. Entertainment Weekly will be the next one to cross off my list.

I believe print magazines as a medium, must be completely rethought. Anyway, I saw the Suicide Girls mag in Austin at our Film Threat party at SXSW and that thing is pretty damn cool. More of a slick collector book than a mag.

Yes, Fine Print stuck me with a bill and another distributor owed me more than 20 grand and that was the final nail in the print coffin. I prefer the web anyway. For anything alternative, which I've always gravitated to anyway, the web provides all the bells and whistles, though I agree with deusxmachina that it's not quite there yet.