Call it The Stereophile Show
An open letter to Primedia:
My name is Wes Phillips and I write for onhifi.com and onhometheater.com and I'm a Senior
Editor at the SoundStage! Network, as well as a long-time audio journalist who has written
for a wide range of magazines and newspapers over the years, including a few Primedia
titles. As an active freelancer, I even write the occasional Stereophile and Stereophile
Guide to Home Theater feature. But I'm not writing today as a pundit, competitor, or
even some-time employee. I'm writing as a passionate member of the two-channel community.
I'm a Stereophile subscriber, of course -- most
serious audiophiles are. My first issue was Larry Archibald's debut as publisher in 1982.
That means I've only read Stereophile for about 20 years, which makes me a relative
newcomer -- I know audiophiles who've been reading it at least a decade longer.
Primedia is in the magazine business, so I don't have to
mention how rare that kind of devotion is. Oh I know there are dentist's offices out there
that have subscribed to Time since Henry Luce was running it, but there are really
only a few magazines which engender that kind of long-term passion: National Geographic,
The New Yorker, and, for a certain kind of forever-young male, Playboy. In
magazine circles, that's blue-chip territory.
So why squander that loyalty and prestige by calling
America's annual hi-fi show something as blandly generic as Home Entertainment 2002, The
Hi-Fi and Home-Theater Event?
I realize that some Faith Popcorn-type expert on trends was
probably paid good money for predicting that home theater or convergence -- or both --
represented the future. That would make anything with the word "stereo" in it
automatically old-fashioned, even the title Stereophile. But that fails to
recognize the difference between a trend and a passion: The future may belong to
convergence, but the people who care enough about consumer electronics to attend shows are
into hi-fi.
I just came back from Montreal's Festival Son et Image,
a stunningly successful hi-fi show that unabashedly promoted listening to two-channel
music. Yeah, I know it has the word Image in it, but that's the name of the
sponsoring magazine (that's brand reinforcement -- some people consider it good synergy).
And yes, there were exhibits dedicated to video and surround sound there, too. But the
show's draw was two-channel audio, and the rooms that demonstrated high-quality
two-channel sound were packed all weekend long.
Ask the Stereophile ad reps about it. They attended
the Festival looking for participants for HE 2002.
So, call it The Stereophile Show -- everybody who
attends calls it that anyway.
And make it a Stereophile show. If the goal is to
put on a successful show, you have to follow through on the expectations that name implies
-- expectations people already hold and that HE 2002 only serves to confound.
I attended the 2001 show and despite its unfortunate timing
(Mother's Day weekend) and logistical nightmares (Clinton's security detail essentially
closed down the premises for three hours on Saturday), it was thronged with enthusiastic
audiophiles -- possibly the best turnout since the 1996 Waldorf-Astoria show.
But the problem is, all those people came to what they
still call -- what still is, as far as they're concerned -- The Stereophile Show.
And they were disappointed at the way that two-channel hi-fi was marginalized. Don't get
me wrong, it was a good show, but by trying to be too many things, it diluted the very
thing the crowds had come to participate in.
And the HE 2001 name not only confused some of your
staunchest supporters, it probably convinced others to downplay the event. My parent
company, the SoundStage! Network, faced with tough choices about how to assign limited
resources, didn't even attend HE 2001. It perceived that Frankfurt's unrepentantly
two-channel High End 2001 was more in line with its readers' interests. I covered HE 2001
on my site, but I understood why the SoundStage! Network didn't.
I know Primedia inherited the name Home Entertainment 2002,
The Hi-Fi and Home Theater Event. Stereophile itself renamed the show HI-FI 92 ten
years ago, and the name changed again two years ago. Now, Primedia has the opportunity to
eliminate confusion that keeps a valuable resource from achieving its potential by
sharpening the show's focus and rightly establishing it as the premier audio event in
America. Primedia stands to attract more attendees, play to the show's true strengths, and
make more money in a single blow.
In Stereophile Primedia has a name to conjure with.
For almost 40 years the magazine has inspired passion in audio hobbyists, and it has grown
in popularity in flush times and recession alike. Its readers are passionate about music,
they're devoted to the magazine, and they represent a demographic as desirable -- or more
so -- as that of any magazine in the company's huge stable of publications. Why not
exploit that synergy?
Unleash the power of the Stereophile name and cater
to the people who love music and support it. They'd come to a Stereophile show, but
they probably haven't got a clue about what goes on at a Home Entertainment Event. Sure,
they came last year, but many of them felt cheated when it wasn't what they expected.
I'm not saying you should ignore multichannel or home
theater. Both categories helped energize the electronics industry -- that's obvious. But
home-theater fans, for instance, don't tend to participate in their hobby in the same
focused, not to say obsessive, manner as audiophiles. Most people, having purchased a
home-theater system, sit back and enjoy it. Their participation in the hobby from then on
primarily hinges around actually watching movies.
They don't relentlessly pursue increasingly better systems
with ever-increasing accuracy, the way audiophiles do. They don't haunt the electronics
stores in search of better and better upgrades. They don't (gasp) subscribe year
after year to specialty magazines.
People will certainly come to the show to see what's new in
home theater -- a lot of people will experience real home theater for the first time at
the show. That's good. People come to these things to see the latest fads and they love
having a chance to see (and hear) fantasy systems. The big electronics companies know
that, and they'll rent the big rooms, and they'll do a land-office business in them.
But shows -- and magazines -- don't survive and thrive off
the big rooms alone. They're a draw and generate lots of revenue, but people tend to
discover Sony and Pioneer and Polk products without all that much help from the magazine
industry. It's all the little companies renting the rooms on the upper floors that keep
the hobby alive and keep people reading the magazines.
One of the most wonderful things about the audio industry
is that it is still populated by passionate people -- frequently by people whose passion
overwhelms their common sense. You still get products that defy reason. Twenty years ago,
one of those products was a hulking power amplifier that put out only 50Wpc and was named
after a race of aliens featured in a 1950s sci-fi movie. People responded to that
irrational product unreasonably -- they loved it. They bought it despite its
staggering price and unwieldy size and insanely low output -- and today Krell is one of
the cornerstones of the specialty audio industry.
People come to these shows precisely to fall in love with
quirky little companies that are still making products that defy reason. That's the fun. I
recently went to the Mall of America and it was intensely boring -- there wasn't a funky,
passionate store in the whole complex, just acre after acre of every store you've ever
seen in a shopping mall, all under one roof.
Nobody would dream of paying $35 to wander around the Mall
of America for three days. But get Conrad-Johnson, Audio Research, Krell, Wilson Audio
Specialties, and MartinLogan under one roof and you'd better step out of the path to the
door -- you could get trampled by the stampede.
When people tell you that two-channel audio is dead and
that you've got to look at the future, they're ignoring the fact that listening to music
isn't about logic -- it's about passion. There's nothing logical about spending $35 to
roam around a hotel for three days. The only people who will do that are irrational music
lovers and hi-fi nuts. Why not ensure that they know what you're doing for those three
days? Call the show by its true name and harness the power of Stereophile's
glorious 40 year history.
Call it The Stereophile Show.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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