Dailyradar closes, internet claims magazines.
  04/30/2001 9:08:38 AM MDT Albuquerque, Nm
  By Dustin D. Brand; Owner AMO

Magazine sites are in trouble, Dailyradar is dead.   The ImagineMedia internet gaming site DailyRadar has closed today. What's next? I can tell you that as a company, ImagineMedia isn't doing well at all. Basically, they're a magazine publisher turned online, without success. ImagineMedia publishes magazines such as PCGamer, NextGen, and Business 2.0; all of which have online counterparts. Neither their online or stale magazines have a large amount of viewers or subscribers, take a look at their investor portfolio for those of you who are suspect. For them, going online wasn't an option, but they didn't do it right, and it's killed their magazines. Although, looking at their boasted awards, and beefed up forward looking press releases, they deny this. If that is the case, why is DailyRadar gone?

  ImagineMedia is a wholly owned US Subsidiary of UK PLC FutureNet. ImagineMedias own News page hasn't been updated in over a year, and that's a sign of what's to come for them as an entire company. In fact, even in the light of their site closures, they're trying to SQUEEZE every last dime out of them before they go bust, or GET SUED for not displaying their AD inventory that they did sell. I'm sure they've considered Chapter 11 protection during all of this. Business 2.0 is doing great in the US right? WRONG.

  It looks as if FutureNet is hurting as well, but they're letting their US Subsidiary hurt more. Barely legal move, but hey. Imagine Media whose parent company is FutureNet, is the US company responsible for the upcoming Microsoft OFFICIAL XBOX Magazine.

  FutureNet is hurting bad though, closing down a few of their supposedly most successful online sites and complete operations, not unlike that of US site Dailyradar.

  Back on February 27, 2001 FutureNet closed it's German, Italian, and European operations for Business 2.0 their magazine which is also in the US, but up for sale here. In addition, they gave IDG.net the magazine PC Player to finish out it's current subscriptions, a long cry from cutting people dry like FutureNet did with their DreamCast publication.

  Along with their recent closures, FutureNet has also brought on new board members in a hope to straighten things out, and certainly a result of their upset shareholders from the fiscal loss in 2000.

  So who is next? I would say ImagineMedia as a whole is gone, they're bust. Microsoft should find another XBOX magazine publisher like IDG. As for a buyout? I don't think so, they have such a "small" following, and obviously couldn't survive in the industry they target, publishing. They tried to take their company from a simple publisher into an internet publisher marrying online content with static and STALE magazine content, and THAT doesn't work people. Let me see, do I want a free Vette or a paid for Yugo?

  Online content is not stale when it's published, it's new not old, fresh not stale. Online content changes, can be changed immediately, and has a "life of it's own" proliferating across the wire.

  As I see it, and I am an expert on Media thank you, most magazines, or even online "magazine" sites need to change-drastically. The smart magazine-online companies and their transition may not have gone smoothly, but they're surviving. Magazines survive from Advertising sales; not subscriptions...be smart now (I get a few hundred free magazines a month if you need to know), and these magazines with their online counterparts do the same. Advertising is their revenue. AOL has a similar situation, their revenue is from AD sales, which make their subscriptions look like a penny compared to a room full of stacked 100 dollar bills. Hey, they know this, can you say AOL Time Warner?

  Another site IGN who's parent company is SnowBall which I recently reported on is being delisted from the NASDAQ, and is hurting so bad they're attempting to charge for some of their content in a subscription based fashion (magazine reminder anyone?). Guess what, even with 1000 $20's in your hand, you can't save your company. Ok then, let's say you look at things more realistically, you have 100 $20's now. Snowball/IGN is looming closure, and they have no way out, it's over for them like it is for many other "internet companies".

  The internet is the worlds most competitive marketplace, the worlds largest library, and does not care where you go, or when. Some of these quote un quote "internet companies" that are in this for the "money" are now seeing their cruel realization of the truth, they know nothing about the internet and how to be successful. Some of these companies may not have "media" in their names like ImagineMedia, but they call themselves Media companies and I beg to differ that they even understand the word Multimedia as in America's Multimedia Online.

  I have admitted before that this recent Internet Advertising decline had cut into my companies revenue, but it's not about to make me go bust, or close down. In fact, Advertising revenue is a plus, not a reliance, you simply can't look at Advertising that way for a company, and I can name a few dozen who did and failed.

  Media, or as I see it, Multimedia is not about profit from AD's, it's about building that experience of multiple media converging into 1, and making it something people need...not want. These money greedy companies who think they're so cool that they can survive only on AD's are all getting a check into reality. It's not a paycheck either, more like a pink slip, and if you work for one of these companies I'm sorry, but you people should really be smarter. Microsoft, who spends plenty of money on ADS doesn't survive on them, they built Windows, and that's they're survival. On the other hand AOL built AOL Software, but now their survival is AD's attached to their millions of subscribers, but it's still ADS.

  It may not take a day, a week, or even a year, but the internet is open, and magazines/stale paper content is fading. Paper may not have lost it's place 5 years from now, but in most of the companies worldwide, if you were to "print" the databases, do you have any idea how much paper this would take? My point is digital multimedia is here to stay, and whether the magazine companies like it or not, they realize it, and they can kiss their subscriptions to their stale printed content goodbye, the internet is here to stay. I must laugh now, because I remember someone telling me in 1997 that the internet was a fad...my reply was simply "You have no idea just how big the internet will be do you?". I did, and I still do.

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