The Place

No mention of sidecars. In 32 pages! That has to be a record. Someone must've upset them, that's worse than just being ignored, that is being snubbed.

Does anyone buy it for racing news, even the solo lads? The reason I ask is for two weeks running earlier this month, I had to wait for someone to finish reading the only copy in our local Sainsburys. Each time they got to the paper just ahead of me, so I was able to roughly time how long they took - around 40-50 seconds. Who was the quick reader? Just the boss of a certain BSB team based in Guisborough.........the one who ran Tommy Hill etc......

I used to read a custom bike mag called Back Street Heroes, it covered lot of the events I was involved in at the time with MAG, the BMF and bike clubs, rallying etc.

I think they should rename MotorCycle News "High Street Heroes" which is what a few of us called it even back then.

motorcycle snooze,
many years ago was ok ... late seventies

Used to be a good paper informed,what's new who's doing what, and even a bit for the custom boys, now its sh*******t

Motorcycle what??? No sorry doesn't ring any bells.

Ducati News.......Ducati must pay a lot into MCN coffers. Everytime I see it it's all Ducati.
Good to use as masking if you've got some painting to do

john newton wrote:Does anyone buy it for racing news, even the solo lads? The reason I ask is for two weeks running earlier this month, I had to wait for someone to finish reading the only copy in our local Sainsburys. Each time they got to the paper just ahead of me, so I was able to roughly time how long they took - around 40-50 seconds. Who was the quick reader? Just the boss of a certain BSB team based in Guisborough.........the one who ran Tommy Hill etc......

The real problem is that MCN is still hugely influential because of its massive weekly circulation. (Bigger than all of the others put together) They soak up a large proportion of the advertising revenue out there and then, if an advertiser wants even more coverage - they'll do a discount deal to include adverts in some of their own in house monthly publications (Bike, Performance Bikes etc). What that does is to stop that revenue being available to the other monthlies and thus destroys their ability to fund interesting / innovative features.

Fast Bikes actually went into covering racing in a fairly big way back from the early 90s to early 2000s - as they saw it as a market not being catered for by the mighty EMAP (now Bauer Media) Group. It worked very well for them under the editorship / ownership of Colin Schiller, but later focused almost entirely on WSB & GP stuff that you could read elsewhere far sooner (internet etc). Motorcycle Racer are trying very hard to cater for this market, but their circulation in comparison to MCN and its group of "Let's do another 600 group test" monthlies is puny.

The only way for Motorcycle Racer or Fast Bikes to be able to have a genuine sportsdesk dept (catering for what we want to read) is to have more available money.
The only way they'll get more money, is to get more advertising revenue.
The only way they'll get more advertising revenue, is to have a (much) bigger circulation.

We don't tend to buy those magazines, because they don't cater for enough of what we want. However, if you're not a buyer/subscriber, they are highly unlikely to listen to what you say you want to read.

Of course perversely - if we all went out and subscribed to MCR today, they'd think it was because we liked what they were already doing and give us more of the same.

Alas as a regular reader of MCN,I have noticed that in the coverage of the MOTOGP,the winner only gets a mention about 3 pages in from the back,so what chance have sidecars got?

Just found the sidecar section ( picture of Moly advertising how to get to the TT to watch the solo's because that's all that racers at the TT) W****RS

Come on Steve is that realy a suprise, you have to go all the way back to the 60's for any real cover, but the sidecar family is still alive and well and will remain so.

Thanks to steveenglish.com

You can try bleating on the social media. ( wont work ) or you can ring them up as i did. ( probably wont work but gave me the satisfaction of telling them why i will never buy it ) I suggest picking it up, reading the bits you want to read ( not much ) then putting it down.

I've E-mailed the editor to explain why, and guess what, no response!

I stopped reading when they stopped reporting on club racing and Duckworth was the editor, met him in the "Saddle" once, absolute T**sser