When surf magazines used to burn DVDs for
kicks!
Life is an unending river with a different surprise
around every corner. An enigmatic puzzle, a puzzling
enigma.
And you want to know what really cracks me, a vet of five
different print mags from surf to men’s interest (porn) to gossip,
up?
It’s the faith in which we hold the paper magazines despite
their lack of transparency (sales) and influence (advertising). At
face value we accept the magazine’s own inflated sales and
circulation figures and the success of its static advertising.
But there is no secret about surf magazines more hidden
than the great DVD bonfires of yore. Y’see, back around the
turn of the century, the sales of paper mags plunged once DVDs got
into the market.
Who wanted photos and dreary words when you could push yourself
back into a couch and get all the surf y’needed? And the surfing
magazines, realising this, soon began packaging “free” (it
actually upped the cover price by a couple of bucks to pay for
the raw costs of burning the discs) DVDs onto their covers.
The big surf co’s were happy at this turn because it meant they
could make, say, 50,000 DVDs, give ’em to a magazine with a
circulation of 50k and they’d have a home for their promo
discs.
Such a touching naivety! The childlike innocence!
I remember once pitching for the DVD of a major surf co. and
being told they were going to give it to a certain surfing magazine
that targeted “youth” because they could shift 40,000 of the co’s
DVDs.
I’d worked at that magazine and knew it sold between 4,000 and
9,000 magazines, closer to the former than the latter. What could I
say? I wasn’t going to throw the mag under the bus (journalists in
arms!) but I knew what was going to happen to 30,000 of those
DVDs.
Wanna know?
They arrive in a large truck at the printers. The printer who is
altered to the unfortunate mismatch of numbers takes 12k or
whatever the print run is and sets ’em aside, ready to be bagged
with the magazine.
The rest are burned with incredible precision and discretion.
The printer, and the magazine, know that a bonfire of 30,000
DVDs would likely take down the warehouse with it, and so
they are disposed of in lots of one thousand, every second or third
day.
Cremation is the only solution despite its toxic payload. The
DVDs can’t be dumped because what would happen if an official from
a surf co. found thousands of its precious movie scattered over a
dirt hill amid the detritus of mattresses and Ikea furniture and
broken toys?
Over my career I can estimate almost half-a-million movies, from
the very bad to the iconic, ended in flames.
If that doesn’t make your spirit wilt, wait until you hear about
the circulation figures. Next month!
