Two months ago I published a post about the switch PC Magazine made from print to fully digital. Two months later, I get an interesting email on LinkedIn from a friend who works for Business Review, a local magazine. Business Review will go digital as well, along with another two magazines in of the same publishing group.

To make their transition smoother and get more visitors to their websites and of course subscribers to their digital issues, the three magazines have started a campaign on Twitter and LinkedIn Groups. Seems like a good idea, but I have to wonder, wouldn’t it have been a lot more effective if they created the social media profiles before the switch, so that they’d have time to get more readers, followers and group members?

We can’t really tell, but at least having reporter profiles already online and their having quite a few connections did help. As for their shift from print to digital, it’s not really a surprise. Sales of copies and ads have decreased significantly everywhere. How many will follow this trend? I know for a fact Ziarul Financiar (daily business and financial newspaper) sells subscriptions that include both online and print editions. Will the rest of the Romanian papers follow? Will it be only those in Bucharest? What will happen to the local newspapers and magazines? Whatever the future holds, it’s an interesting field to watch!

Update

Apparently, they’re switching back to print starting March 1st…They thought about it, rendered some publishing costs more efficient, and are going back to print. Good news or bad, it tells a lot about what strategy means for Romanian print magazines of the BMG group!

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A couple of years ago, if you told someone you didn’t own a TV set or, worse, you had one but did not watch, they would look at you in disbelief, wondering if you were plane crazy. What else could you do in the evening and during weekends? Things have now changed. You can see admiration in their eyes – you broke the evil circle, you know longer have to plan everything around commercial breaks! No more stupid news getting you through to the weather broadcast!

I rented apartments were there wasn’t a TV and I was happy. No temptation, more time. Then I moved and was faced with the evil box once more. For about a month and a half, once I got home, I just had to watch it for a short while which turned into hours. And of course we needed to listen to the news in the morning, while drinking our coffee!

I then realized the madness I was allowing myself to be dragged into and stopped. Don’t get me wrong, there are series I still love and watch, but on the computer, not on TV, and here are the reasons why:

• TV is quite addictive. It’s an easy way to let yourself be lazy while thinking you are doing something fun. But what’s fun about detergent commercial, dark and useless news worth to throw at the garbage bin, or about the boring movie you decide to watch until the one that actually interests you starts?
• It is extremely time consuming: a 20 minute episode gets to 45 minutes because of 15 minutes of commercial breaks and because you can’t really skip the intro.
• It can easily get you angry: you see people exposing their twisted way of thinking that makes you wonder if the world around you is still sane. Do they actually expect anyone to believe there’s a ghost haunting the TV crew LIVE?!?
• It alters one’s sense of what’s important – given the dozens of false critical happenings being poured into our brains during the news bulletins, there are increasing numbers of people believing in false fashion gods and in the greatness of self-imposed famous lives. The political scene is a circus and everything really important is lost as such facts get a quick mention.
• It’s old news! Everything they broadcast: movies, music, news, have already been posted online. Especially since there are quite a few frequently updated, domestic online newspapers.

And I can assure you I am in the target of quite a few commercials I decide not to watch. The downside? I never see the funny ones. But I can live with that, everything extremely funny is said to get uploaded on YouTube and are then forwarded through emails.

What do you think of this? Do you watch TV? Why, why not?

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