I wonder where the money is going?
And I wonder how much a 1980s subscription cost (adjusted for inflation?)
>> The magazine was initially sold to the public as a perk for joining the society
Maybe that's not such a bad idea.
A carload of up to 7 people is STILL only 40$. A normal cinema would be 22 ish each!! Just charge normal prices!
$20 is a lot for most families, outside of Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, and a few other areas.
Economist has rich subscribers. I don't think NatGeo would be anywhere close to 1.8M with higher prices.
Personally, I'd rather fly somewhere than see photos.
What about suburban DC? Dallas? Houston? Denver? Salt Lake City? Chicago?
Not sure if your last sentence was intended to be ironic, but there’s nowhere you can fly that’s less than an Economist subscription
Looking at allegiant’s site right now the only thing I could find for that price is a flight from Provo to Vegas
$20 around SF here is less than a couple cocktails.
I think National Geographic (which I'm a subscriber) can charge 10x more without losing 90% of it's audience. It's the price to pay to receive good articles at your home and it's definitely worth tons more than drinking and eating junk in the dark.
I live in the Midwest. Even when I was living paycheck to paycheck in rural Minnesota, $20 per year was never a lot of money.
> Personally, I'd rather fly somewhere than see photos.
For the $200 per year I pay for The Economist I could maybe get to Chicago if I got a really good deal.
Every dollar counts when you're impoverished, but I don't think National Geographic is making or breaking it based on a demographic that makes purchasing decisions at that margin.
Lots of it must be schools and doctor and dentist offices.
I don’t know where you’re finding such cheap flights
At the current rate, it could have like 50 full time + part-time writers on staff (let's say 90K * 50 = 4.5M - might seem low for Silicon Valley, but professional journalists and writers would jump with joy for such a gig), plus dozens of office staff (say another 2M), plus fund 24 (2 per issue) year-long big stories with like up to 100K per story (2.5M). That would be like ~10M. They could pay rent, utilities, taxes, and other expenses with the rest of 36M (or even go remote, and save even more).
You aren't going to keep the subscription base without spending a ton on marketing.
I am sure many other cost that we aren't thinking about since not in the magazine business.
To me, I am a prime example of someone who use to absolutely love magazines who could not be bothered now. There is no price that will get me to subscribe. I just don't want to be sent paper in the mail.
If you do quality work, you don't need to spend a ton on marketing. And this is very livable revenue - tons of media outlets thrived on less (inflation adjusted) back in the day.
The main problem is belonging to some conglomerate who doesn't care for such small profits or a business breaking even. They're an insect to them.
A corporation running from a non-profit dedicated to the mission (as opposed to those greedy people), or passionate private owner(s), would have no problem to continue.
Producing what National Geographic magazine does is not cheap and they have historically had much higher revenue. Nevermind that they are still continuing, just without staff writers.
Nobody said it is. But what it used to cost to run it in the times of media excess and a much larger subscriber base, is not really reflective of what it can run on and still get good stories today.
Today though photo reporting and writing is much more competitive and cheaper than it has been, even at the top. Glassdoor puts NatGeo salaries at a $65K median.
And freelancers sent on a story are paid like 20K or so for 3 weeks salary plus expenses (for Americans. Regional freelancers can usually be paid even less). That makes 5 such stories per issue at 1.2M (internal editing, processing etc is already covered by regular staff, as is more generic articles that are not in the field assignments).
>even when presented with basic numbers.
Where are those "basic numbers"?
If quality of the magazine deteriorates, I will cancel my membership. If the price goes up by 20%, I don't think I'll even notice.
Even so $20 per year seems impractically low. I pay ten times that for my Economist subscription. I really imagine they could strike a middle ground without losing too many subscribers.