Muscular Development Is the Last Standing Magazine: What Now?
I can’t begin to tell you how much I enjoyed reading bodybuilding and fitness magazines back in the day. When an issue would show up in the mail, I was like a kid in a candy store. I’d sit down and read the magazine from cover to cover without stopping. The Gregg Valentino pieces were pure gold. I wanted to take in as much information as I could and dive deep into the industry. Unfortunately, print magazines have died off. Yet, there is one left standing after the rest pivoted — Muscular Development. Either Steve Blechman, the owner of Muscular Development, is completely nuts or he feels he has an advantage now. Which of the two is it or both? Let’s discuss.
The Death of Print Magazines
What is there to say? You’re reading this article online. Probably shortly after it was published, right? That’s the power of the internet and the digital age. Before social media and blogging were a thing, everyone would open up their mailbox hoping a bodybuilding magazine was there. But that’s all changed — that is unless you subscribe to the Muscular Development print issues.
Is there something Steve Blechman knows that no one else does? Or does he not want to give up on the dream that print magazines will forever be relevant? I’m going to go with the latter. Look, I’ll say it again… I loved sitting down with the various magazines like Muscular Development and paging through them. But that was many moons ago and now I look for and prefer instantaneous information — as in RIGHT NOW. I don’t want to wait a month to read something.
The interesting part when you think about things comes down to the speed of information. Following the Arnold Classic and Olympia every year, you would either need to pick up the phone to find out who won or wait a month until bodybuilding magazines like Muscular Development had an opportunity to publish the results and pictures in their issue. Let me say it again, we would have to wait a month to find out the results from a show.
Related Article: The Death of Print Media
Nowadays, you simply hop on social media, and people on Facebook will tell you who won five seconds after the results are given and even show you images while the show is taking place — it’s like you’re there in the seats. It’s all about the speed and transfer of information. That’s the bottom line.
Can Muscular Development Differentiate and Still Make It Work?
I’ll catch some flak for this, but I applaud Steve Blechman and Ron Harris for still pushing to make print work. No one else is doing it, or at least not successfully. Now, I don’t know the sales numbers for Muscular Development subscriptions, but they must be somewhat decent to keep throwing money at it, right? I, unfortunately, don’t have those answers.
The tough task Steve and Ron are given is answering the question of “what would the readers actually want to see in the magazine?” It’s a tough question. Again, by the time the issue would come out, everyone would have already known the results of a show, so would people really want to read about that anymore?
Where Muscular Development differentiates, in my opinion, is with their writers. Now, you know how I feel about writers — heck, I am one (just not for Muscular Development). That being said, writers can have a decent following and that’s where Muscular Development has a selling point.
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