Duane Thomas’s new article

[Eye Cutter]

gun games was a great mag. too bad it folded up. i think i have the old ones around someplace.

i think jojo knows the publishers!

[Wakal]

Had to drive a thousand miles (literally ), but I found a copy at a Minnesota Barnes and Noble

A very good read! Too bad the rest of the magazine was subpar

Alex

[TriggerT]

Too bad the rest of the magazine was subpar

I don't know, I thought the articale about "Tactical" things that look cool, but aren't the best for the average guy was good. I really liked how that article talked about not worrying about looking cool, but actually being able to hit the target. More than two items of interest in a single publication is more than I ever expect ot find.

[MBaneACP]

Hey Duane-O;

Great article! You did a very nice job of hammering home the points that we competitors have learned over the years. And well written, too!

RE: GunGAMES, I was the editor of the last incarnation of the magazine. I pulled it out of bankruptcy and relaunched it for the new owners--for years that was one of my gigs, consulting on small magazine launches, resurrections and "saves," so I pretty much knew what I was doing.

The problem was that the magazine kept getting shuffled around from owner to owner, and when you scraped the chrome off you were left with a bunch of sleazebags looking to make a quick buck. THERE ARE NO QUICK BUCKS TO BE MADE IN THE MAGAZINE BUSINESS! Not now; not ever...

Since then, I've been regularly going back to the big players in the mag biz to try and get something GunGAMES-like put together...and have been totally unsuccessful. Part of the problem is the fact that I worked with the old GunGAMES...the group publisher of Primedia (G&A, Shotgun News, Handguns, Shooting Times, etc.) said that me of all people should know the concept just wasn't viable, since I wasn't able to make a go of it and I was pretty good at what I did. I then went to NYC and made a personal presentation to Stanley Harris, owner of Harris Publications (Combat Handguns, Guns of the Old West, etc.) on the topic. I've worked for Stanley off and on and we get along great. He said that no matter how he ran the numbers, the market just wasn't there. Primedia, Harris and Publishers Development (American Handgunner, Guns) all have professionally done surveys of their existing base that categorically state "little or no interest" in competition related stories. Both I and Paul Erhardt, formerly of NSSF, have argued until we're blue-in-the-face that those surveys are fundamentally flawed, even making a special trip to all the gun mags to make our pitch. No dice.

I went for an "end-run," so to speak, by trying to get NSSF to create a shooting sports coordinator position, which would have allowed Paul Erhardt and I to pull the shooting sports together under one roof. We figured that if we could "prove" the market and generate some serious numbers, we'd be in a much stronger position to negotiate. NSSF thought it was a great idea, but not something they wanted to get involved with.

The ONLY people who have stood up for the shooting sports are the executives at The Outdoor Channel. That's why I work for them and not OLN or the other shows (who dangled some pretty big carrots). TOC puts their money where their mouth is. They sponsor the Steel Challenge, the Sportsmen's Team Challenge and several other matches and they're letting me put together what will be largest handgun competition ever. We're in the middle of planning a shooting sports documentary that we're going to try and place on other cable channels after we run it. That documentary is also going to DIRECTLY address the issue of why we're invisible in the media..."Somebody that we don't need to talk about on the SHOOTING forum" isn't the only person who knows how to do ambush interviews!

mb

[EricW]

The National Shooting Sports Foundation doesn't want to have anything to do with organizing the shooting sports.........?

<Groan...>

[BSeevers]

I just read it and again Home Run Duane.

Very insightful, fair and balanced. Of course you shoot matches unlike almost ALL of the other writers. How can you write about chocolate cake if you never eat any? Same goes for IPSC competition.

PS I know the guy in the "Sul" pic on Tactics. He would never use that silly hold and is a prop for the photo. He was my CCW qualification instructor and would probably have a few similar comments about IPSC that Duane did.

[lndshrk]

Great Article, on the newstands here in Ct last week - found the comparison of IPSC to IDPA particularily accurate and how I describe both to people who are interested. Shoot both . . . enjoy both! Would use this article to introduce anyone to the sport. Thanks!

[rhino]

It would seem that the market would be there if a periodical included the sports with the big numbers participating, but what do I know?

If a magazine included a strong focus on trap, skeet, and clays ... but also included the action shooting sports and conventional shooting sports ... maybe it would find a big enough market. Plus it might help mend some fences among the factions.

[Mark Perez]

re : Gun Games mag ,

The same fate happened to a mag called "Tactical Shooter" , geared mostly to the "tactical" long gun and it's practical use - it was published by the same group that does Precision Shooting, a mag dedicated mostly to BR rifle.

Apparently , the 'tac' market was to small to support the advertisers who paid the bills to keep the press running - this was before 3-Gun took off .

I'm still looking for a copy of HG to read Duane's article ..

Mark

[Patrick Sweeney]

Publishers care not a whit about competitive shooting. Nor anything else, for that matter. what they care about is simple: "Will my investment in this operation bring me a suitable return, or will it suck cash?"

If they are using the wrong survey data, then the worse for us. But they are not going to scotch the deal because the subject is guns. (At least, not most.)

I used to subscribe to both GunGames and Tactical Shooter. I'll have to take Mike's word for it, but his description fits well with my impressions on the few occasions I dealt with the staff. As for TS, it and the other titles from the publisher are an acquired taste. While I always found the information useful, quite often I'd find the subject covered, or the authors peculiarities, strange. I mean, plinking at 600 yards with a Marlin .30-30 and other brush guns? For a series of three or four articles?

Magazines need a market, and a perceived need by the readers. Five years ago, you couldn't find a single magazine like Maxim or FMH on the stands. Now it is all anyone wants to do.

Could a properly-done competition magazine survive on the news-stands? Probably. Would it lose money for the first few years? Yes. Is this something one of us should do after winning the lottery? You bet.

But we have strayed far from praising Duane on his article. (Even if he did beat me to it!) Well done, Duane.

[Irishlad]

Trap, skeet and clays each have their own magazine(s) and I think they like that way to be honest. Tough groups.