When issue number 14 of Blender reaches the newsstands next week, it will be the last issue ever produced. In its place, parent company Dennis Interactive this week launched the Blender Online Network, a Web-based version almost identical to the soon-to-be-defunct CD-ROM zine. But while digizine publishers continue to struggle for mainstream acceptance and eye the Web's potential, not everyone agrees what the future of CD-ROM magazine publishing will be.
"The CD-ROM market hasn't been there for the last two months," says Jason Pearson, creative director for Blender. "The Web is the obvious answer: the freeness, the availability, the distribution. And with Shockwave, now you can do virtually anything on the Web that you could with a CD-ROM."
Blender as a CD-ROM was suffering - the audience for the three-year-old bi-monthly pop culture and music zine had dropped from 85,000 to 50,000, and it had lost a large chunk of distributors. Now, as a Web-based downloadable client, à la MSN, Blender is offering itself for free, with bi-weekly content updates. It will be supported entirely by pop-up ads similar to the ones on the CD-ROM. The only difference in content, says Pearson, is that there will be far less video (the CD-ROM versions contain about 1 1/2 hours of video interviews). And although the Web version will not be taking in subscription revenue, Pearson also estimates that distribution and production costs will be "greatly reduced."
Blender isn't the only CD-ROM magazine to find the industry a challenge. Development costs are high (prices range from US$5.95 to $10.95 an issue) and sales lag far behind traditional magazines. Digizine, for example, went "on hold" earlier this year after only two issues, and Go Digital folded last year. The 2-year-old men's title Trouble and Attitude is puttering along with twice-yearly issues of a modest 25,000 copies - but doesn't take ads because its size means they "don't really get advertisers knocking down the door."
Music title Launch, however, has seen its subscriptions double in the past six months, up to 150,000 total readers, in part thanks to co-advertising campaigns with Intel, and some new bundling deals with Sony, Compaq, and Gateway. In addition to being distributed in music outlets, Launch is finding that most of its market picks it up in supermarkets. But while Launch is working to integrate the Web into its CD-ROM (regularly updating the site with tours, reviews, and band information), and plans to emphasize the Web site more in the future, it does not see the Web as a viable medium for its content.
"We see the Net as a very valuable part of multimedia, but there's a big distinction between what we produce on a CD-ROM and what we could do on the Internet," says Fiona Posell, VP of marketing at Launch. "We're not a CD-ROM company, we're a content producer. We just want to get that [content] to people at their PC. CD-ROM is the only way to deliver that content right now"; but they are also looking at DVD and cable/satellite options as future distribution options.
"CD-ROM is a very viable distribution channel. But it's a fixed media, so you lose the freshness," says Douglas Lovato, general manager of the former Digizine. "I think the future is a Web/CD-ROM hybrid."
The one thing that everyone from Blender to Launch agrees on is that the CD-ROM magazine industry has a lot of education to do before audiences, advertisers, and retailers totally understand and accept what a disc-based magazine is. That's where the Web has a leg-up. But outside of Blender, even those that have struggled still seem bullish about the potential.
"The industry's only a year and a half old," says an optimistic Charles Platkin, president of Trouble and Attitude producer Marinex. "Just look at the [print] magazine industry and how long it takes them to turn a profit.... Everything's very tight, but we're breaking even."
