January 25, 2023
Cnet, Now In Print
- by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, November 3, 2014
Cnet, which began life as a digital
consumer portal of news, information and reviews largely generated from tech magazines that are barely still available in print, is now a print magazine. The publisher -- which is now a part of
CBS’ CBS Interactive division -- this morning unveiled plans to launch a new quarterly print Cnet Magazine with a Nov. 3 premiere issue cover date, hitting newsstands in the U.S. and
Canada now.
The issue, which features a cover story about actor and rapper LL Cool J’s “connected” technologies, has a cover price of $5.99.
“Cnet Magazine will extend the Cnet brand and leverage the print medium to showcase Cnet’s renowned reviews, storytelling, amazing photography and access to the people making a difference in the tech world,” states Mark Larkin, senior vice president and general manager of Cnet.advertisement
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I think that it is a really good idea that Cnet, which was formerly only available for online subscription, is now going to be available for people and consumers to purchase the subscription in a print magazine. By Cnet deciding to expand to print form they have widened this base on the amount of people that they can reach. Many people that may not have ever heard of Cnet articles or subscription may be interested in buying or subscribing to the print form. People that may want to buy the print form because they don’t feel as tech savvy as others, but may still want to know the latest in the tech world. This is also a good idea because bookstore will be able to carry individual magazine issues that will allow consumers to buy only one issue without have to purchase a whole entire magazine subscription. This idea allows more consumers access to Cnet’s product, by expanding their consumer base. One downfall to this could be the cost of producing the print magazines. If Cnet dose not find ways to attract people to their print magazine base it will be hard for them to continue to make a product and could potentially cause them to loose money and take away from needed profits. Overall I think that this is a smart idea on the part of Cnet, they just have to make sure that people are aware of there magazine and find ways to promote their product so people will want to buy it.
Interesting that the people who claim to be tech "gurus" going back to the stone ages of print....
Good luck with that strategy. The current tech audience is not buying tech magazines and neither is the younger audience they seem to be targeting. It's very hard to build audience loyalty with a quarterly publication. I don't see the economics working in the current media environment.