Sound & Vision once commanded respect. Sony, Netflix, even 60 Minutes all visited the magazine’s 45th floor offices north of Times Square. Apple hand-delivered its first iPod to the magazine to get the opinion of technical editors before the company had even announced the game-changing product. I had the good fortune to jog around the Central Park Reservoir with a thousand tunes in my pocket when people were still carrying cassette players and radios.
Today’s version of the magazine is a far cry from those days. There is just one issue left. AVTech Media Ltd, a British publisher, confirmed to the Guardian on 20 August that it would shutter Sound & Vision’s print edition after the forthcoming October/November issue. The magazine’s website, which has a miniscule editorial budget compared to the print edition, will continue. The hard truth is that digital advertising has failed to live up to the revenue heights of print advertising.
In a statement, Sound & Vision’s editor, Mark Henninger, said: “Shifting Sound & Vision to a digital-only format is about more than just adapting – it’s about thriving. Our readers demand immediacy and convenience, and this move lets us deliver the high-quality content they expect without the delays and limitations of print. While we’re proud of our print legacy, it’s time to embrace the future and ensure that Sound & Vision remains at the forefront of the industry, right where our audience needs us.”
I have a long history with the magazine as S&V’s founding technology editor. I continued to serve as a contributing editor to S&V and wrote a regular column for the print magazine until the very end. The only surprise about the print product is that it lasted as long as it did in the face of more timely competition from cheaper-to-produce, internet-only sites.
Launched at the dawn of digital TV in early 1999, S&V combined two magazines each with its own storied history: the older Stereo Review and the newer Video. I had served as the executive editor of Video from 1996 through that magazine’s last issue. The former had ridden hobbyist interest in hi-fi equipment; the latter grew to prominence as video cassette recorders changed the way consumers watched TV. Instead of segmenting these enthusiast markets into those catering to audio and the other to video, the French-based publisher, Hachette Filipacchi Media US (HFM), determined that it could widen the audience and advertiser base by promoting the concept of home theater: putting the booming surround sound and big picture of a movie theater into every home.
For the first few years, the bet paid off. Issues regularly exceeded 178 pages, sometimes reaching 200, with lots of full-page advertising bought by the major consumer electronics companies in anticipation that Americans would replace their conventional cathode ray tubes with high-definition televisions and flat screens. LG, Sony and others bought ads. Panasonic purchased a memorable page for its new HDTV set line declaring “immaculate reception”. In the magazine’s early 2000s glory days, circulation was stated as 450,000 (including newsstand and mail subscriptions). In seeking interviews with company executives and analysts and to arrange for products to review, editors rounded off the number to half a million, adding that the number didn’t count pass-along readership. Flush with success, our publisher treated advertising and editorial employees to an evening of dining and horse racing at the Meadowlands in New Jersey.
Companies made pilgrimages to the S&V offices in search of expert evaluation and feedback. Sony put a team of engineers on a plane from San Diego to the S&V lab on W 38th St when editors found lines of interference defacing what should have been a pristine picture coming from its would-be TiVo killer. (The culprit turned out to be an unrelated wireless device in the lab.) We accepted a solicitation from the cofounder of Netflix to stop by and introduce his company before most anyone had ever heard of Netflix. A crew from 60 Minutes filmed an editor walking around the office for B-roll in an anticipated piece about the role pornography played in pushing forward new technology. Simply being in the magazine’s office connoted operating on the cutting edge.
From a technology editor’s perspective, it was the best of times. Unlike a fashion magazine that might chronicle the seasonal movement of hemlines, everything was rapidly changing. The first issue of S&V covered the first portable MP3 player, several years before the iPod, as well as how people were using a new device with a dial-up modem called WebTV, to receive rudimentary internet content on their TV sets. DVD players were booming. Napster had taken on the meaning of Xerox, giving license for anyone to make unlimited copies. Deep black levels of Pioneer plasma displays left videophiles pining for more. High-definition pictures revealed jaw-dropping details like the crevices on actors’ faces. People were learning to love discrete audio channels that provided surprise sound effects as they experienced movies and TV crime shows embedded with Dolby Digital audio on their multi-speaker systems. Viewers were thrilled at their newfound ability to leapfrog commercials using a hard-drive recorder or as we put it: “To be able to watch 60 Minutes in 45”.
During our watch, big-screen TVs went from quarter-ton space eaters to hang-on-the-wall panels. Resolution shot up from 240 lines offered by a typical VCR to 1920 x 1080 full HD to 4K and beyond. Over-the-air broadcasting mostly capitulated to cable and direct satellite TV which in turn succumbed to streaming and take-anywhere screens. It was a thrilling time to write the first draft of technology’s history.
Unfortunately, even magazines about technology were not immune from the dramatic shift from print to pixels. S&V’s most recent issue, August/September, contained 76 pages, including only 12 full pages of advertising. Through the screen-based distributor Zinio, S&V made facsimiles of its print pages available for download on phones and tablets for those willing to pay another subscription. But much of the content appeared for free on soundandvision.com after it had appeared in print. A magazine priced at the newsstand for $7.99 a copy could hardly compete with the same publisher’s free content. Besides, finding a newsstand carrying actual magazines had become nearly impossible.
A series of publishers scrambled to pass their declining print publications to other owners. I was part of a layoff of senior staff in 2006 ahead of HFM shopping around its titles that resulted in a sale to Bonnier Corporation, the US division of the Swedish Bonnier Group in 2009. In 2013, Bonnier sold it to Source Interlink, which then merged its own consumer electronics magazine Home Theater into S&V. It also changed the name of the publishing group to Ten: The Enthusiast Network. In 2018, Ten unloaded the magazine and associated websites to AVTech, which is now ending the print run.
I majored in magazines at Syracuse’s journalism school. Every magazine I’ve worked for over the decades has joined the dustbin of history; I guess what I really majored in was obituary writing.
