Tom Rogers: The Internet Won't Save Magazines

Maybe it's the white-knuckle anxiety everyone feeling over the economy, but the happy talk that's usually so prevalent at the American Magazine Conference is somewhat less in evidence this year. Whereas last year's conference had a distinct band-playing-on-the-Titanic feeling to it, this time around it seems like speakers are at least beginning to really grapple with the industry's challenges.

Exhibit A: Portfolio managing editor Dan Colarusso -- a.k.a. the boss of me -- just interviewed TiVo CEO Tom Rogers, who sounded some pretty pessimistic notes about the state of the magazine business. Rogers speaks from experience, having spent four years running Primedia, then still one of the biggest U.S. publishers. (He opened today with a joke about his tenure at Primedia, which ended unhappily: "I'm not sure what takes more guts, my coming back to talk to the magazine industry or, in the middle of a stock-market panic, putting out a magazine called Portfolio.)

In the case of magazines, suggested Rogers, the idea that technological disruption always equals opportunity may be somewhat misleading. "I look at the internet as less of a solution and still a challenge, whereas I think the magazine industry is still highly focused on it being some kind of solution," he said.

He compared publishers' situation, unfavorably, to the position TiVo and other commercial-skipping devices have put the TV networks in. "I'm not sure in the internet there lies an answer for the magazine industry, whereas I'm fairly sure the television industry is going to have to come to terms and find a solution" to the DVR issue, he said.

(On the other hand, he didn't seem terribly impressed with the TV industry's efforts to date: "My guess is they got two years really to see if they can get ahead of it. We're not seeing the level of urgency yet that convinces me they are going to get ahead of it.")

Rogers did say he sees a possible partial solution in Amazon's Kindle, which he praised for being so user-friendly that his elderly mother uses it. While the Kindle itself won't be a platform for magazines, future e-readers may. That would be great for magazine publishers, he said, because of the horrifying inefficiency of magazine distribution. "It cries out for some kind of digital solution to get out of that kind of infrastructure," he said.

Rogers concluded by offering a sort of koan on the nature of technology as it affects business: "If it can be done, it will be done, and the question is, is it going to be done to you, or will you be the one doing it?"

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