Death of a Magazine
When I saw this news item, I couldn’t help but blog on it immediately:
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Disney Publishing Worldwide is giving the ax to Disney Adventures magazine, the company said. The November issue will be the publication's final. Disney Publishing attributed its decision to an effort to better focus resources and maximize long-term growth potential through new magazine and book initiatives.
The demise of Disney Adventures, which was introduced for tweens in 1990, closely follows the end of fellow child soldier Nick Jr., which MTV Networks closed with the April issue. It isn't clear that there's any particular exodus of children from magazines, but proliferating competition and rising costs are knocking out big magazines at a fairly regular clip these days; adults for their part have lost Premiere, Jane, Life and Child so far this year.
Disney Adventures, which still maintained paid circulation above 1 million, ran 97.9 ad pages in the first half of the year, up 4.5% over first-half 2006, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. The magazine's ad pages, however, had declined 3.9% in 2006 as a whole.
Let me tell you all a little story. When I was a wee lad of about eight or night summers, I started subscribing to this magazine. I still remember the first issue I got with the front cover featuring Tim Allen dressed as his character Tim Taylor from “Home Improvement” alongside Disney cartoon character Pete, dressed as a carpenter accordingly. The magazine blew me away, flipping through it’s pages, reading the different stories and news items they had regarding upcoming movies and TV shows, interesting historical info, Weird Yet True facts, but most of all, a Comix Zone featuring comics based on all the awesome cartoon shows Disney had in their “Disney Afternoon” line-up followed by a section on upcoming video games systems and their accompanying games.
The magazine was absolutely golden. It was the perfect magazine for any kid who loved Disney. I’d get a new issue and immediately open up to the comics and once I was done, check out the rest of the stories. But over the years, the death of “Disney Afternoon” meant a decline in the quality of the comics of “Disney Adventures.” They replaced all their usual comics with ones that they’d invented themselves that had no taste, no laughs and no sense. They continued running comic adaptations of the great Disney animated movies of the 90s, but when they next started running comics based on the “One Saturday Morning Lineup,” I realized that I was not in high school and reading the comics in the magazine was starting to make me feel older.
Other signs of the magazine’s change would manifest themselves in the other sections of the magazine. The video game and technology stuff became geared towards little to nothing that grabbed my interest. The rest of the magazine would run articles on shows and movies I wound up hating, such as “The X-Files” and “Batman and Robin.” When I realized that it was a magazine that sold itself out to movie companies to hype up all the movies in that age group no matter how bad they were, that was a major revelation for me. And their hyping of “The New Nightmare,” which was definitely the worst movie of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series, was not only in bad taste but something about hyping a rated R horror movie in a magazine aimed at kids 7-12 is just wrong.
Nonetheless, I made the decision in high school to stop subscribing to the magazine and started subscribing to “Sonic the Hedgehog” comics instead, which I still subscribe to as it holds appeal to even older fans. It was rather difficult to give up, but “Disney Adventures” as it was, was only a shadow of it’s former greatness. In the following years, I’d occasionally pick up a an issue on the rack at Safeway while I waited in line, only to watch the magazine decline further hyping even more bad movies per issue, only now the Comix Zone had to rerun good comics from before just to save itself.
The death of this magazine will be something of mourning to me, because of the long lasting effect it had on my childhood, but it’s death is past overdue. R.I.P., “Disney Adventures.” And may the children that you so gladly entertain convert to better magazines as their saving grace.
By the way, completely off topic here, but I thought I might lighten things up here by including a picture of a certain gorgeous Disney redhead mermaid. Only it may not be what you’d expect. Guess what Disney movie is becoming a Broadway musical in a short while? Yup, you guessed it.
NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Disney Publishing Worldwide is giving the ax to Disney Adventures magazine, the company said. The November issue will be the publication's final. Disney Publishing attributed its decision to an effort to better focus resources and maximize long-term growth potential through new magazine and book initiatives.
The demise of Disney Adventures, which was introduced for tweens in 1990, closely follows the end of fellow child soldier Nick Jr., which MTV Networks closed with the April issue. It isn't clear that there's any particular exodus of children from magazines, but proliferating competition and rising costs are knocking out big magazines at a fairly regular clip these days; adults for their part have lost Premiere, Jane, Life and Child so far this year.
Disney Adventures, which still maintained paid circulation above 1 million, ran 97.9 ad pages in the first half of the year, up 4.5% over first-half 2006, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. The magazine's ad pages, however, had declined 3.9% in 2006 as a whole.
Let me tell you all a little story. When I was a wee lad of about eight or night summers, I started subscribing to this magazine. I still remember the first issue I got with the front cover featuring Tim Allen dressed as his character Tim Taylor from “Home Improvement” alongside Disney cartoon character Pete, dressed as a carpenter accordingly. The magazine blew me away, flipping through it’s pages, reading the different stories and news items they had regarding upcoming movies and TV shows, interesting historical info, Weird Yet True facts, but most of all, a Comix Zone featuring comics based on all the awesome cartoon shows Disney had in their “Disney Afternoon” line-up followed by a section on upcoming video games systems and their accompanying games.
The magazine was absolutely golden. It was the perfect magazine for any kid who loved Disney. I’d get a new issue and immediately open up to the comics and once I was done, check out the rest of the stories. But over the years, the death of “Disney Afternoon” meant a decline in the quality of the comics of “Disney Adventures.” They replaced all their usual comics with ones that they’d invented themselves that had no taste, no laughs and no sense. They continued running comic adaptations of the great Disney animated movies of the 90s, but when they next started running comics based on the “One Saturday Morning Lineup,” I realized that I was not in high school and reading the comics in the magazine was starting to make me feel older.
Other signs of the magazine’s change would manifest themselves in the other sections of the magazine. The video game and technology stuff became geared towards little to nothing that grabbed my interest. The rest of the magazine would run articles on shows and movies I wound up hating, such as “The X-Files” and “Batman and Robin.” When I realized that it was a magazine that sold itself out to movie companies to hype up all the movies in that age group no matter how bad they were, that was a major revelation for me. And their hyping of “The New Nightmare,” which was definitely the worst movie of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series, was not only in bad taste but something about hyping a rated R horror movie in a magazine aimed at kids 7-12 is just wrong.
Nonetheless, I made the decision in high school to stop subscribing to the magazine and started subscribing to “Sonic the Hedgehog” comics instead, which I still subscribe to as it holds appeal to even older fans. It was rather difficult to give up, but “Disney Adventures” as it was, was only a shadow of it’s former greatness. In the following years, I’d occasionally pick up a an issue on the rack at Safeway while I waited in line, only to watch the magazine decline further hyping even more bad movies per issue, only now the Comix Zone had to rerun good comics from before just to save itself.
The death of this magazine will be something of mourning to me, because of the long lasting effect it had on my childhood, but it’s death is past overdue. R.I.P., “Disney Adventures.” And may the children that you so gladly entertain convert to better magazines as their saving grace.
By the way, completely off topic here, but I thought I might lighten things up here by including a picture of a certain gorgeous Disney redhead mermaid. Only it may not be what you’d expect. Guess what Disney movie is becoming a Broadway musical in a short while? Yup, you guessed it.
posted by Jaimetud at 9:50 AM
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