Airline Magazines
In the preparations to go back home to take a short break (this Friday!), the image of the airline magazine that will be in front of my seat came to my mind. In my thought I could feel the high quality of the paper used, the images used in it, among other high-quality characteristics. I also saw myself, however, flipping through all the pages in just a couple of minutes and putting it back into the pocket in front of my seat.
For a while I've wondered: how can airline magazines seem to be of such high quality and still be so boring? I realized I was not the only one who felt this way when I once told my sister: "that's probably more boring than American Way", and she fully agreed with such statement (and laughed like crazy as well).
My theory is that the editors realize that most passengers will eventually pick up the magazine and flip through its pages. In the absence of interesting contents people will pay more attention to the advertisements in the magazine, and so an equilibrium with lots of advertisements and few quality contents is reached.
Those advertisements are mostly targeted to the business traveler however. I don't fit in the category of business traveler (instead trouble is my business when flying: e.g., getting lost on the way to the airport, my bags rarely ever arriving with me, going to the wrong airport, and also the sad experience of missing a flight because all the parking garages at DCA were full) (1), and so I end up not paying attention to neither the contents nor the advertisements in the magazine.
Anyone else find airline magazines boring? If so, do you think this is a consistent theory to explain why there are few incentives to provide high quality contents in an airline magazine?
(1) I can't wait to see what new experience will be awaiting for me this Friday on my way to Reagan Airport (or is it Dulles?)
This post was written on May 9, 2006 at 2:51pm but will be made public as soon as the blog gets declassified from the spam category.
posted by bcj @ 4:12 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
I'd guess that improving the content quality of a magazine increases revenues in two ways: 1. directly by selling more magazines 2. indirectly, by increasing the price the publisher charges for an advertisement due to increased readership. By making the magazines freely available to passengers, these incentives are removed. Alternatively, the airline turns the content into advertising for its own product. All the stories are about how great this or that travel location is, which lo and behold, the airline flies to!
Also, I think the reason the physical quality of the magazine is so high is because it has to last through a whole month of passengers flipping through it.
To eric,
Do people actually buy American Way?!
IMHO, it is just another way to throw up advertisements in front of potential consumers. It's pretty similar to previews (and now commercials!) before movies that the theater.
Jeff,
My argument is based on the fact that American Way is free.
Not all inflight magazines are terrible. United's "Hemispheres" had, for a while, a very good short fiction section called something like "Seats 24 A&B". They also have a monthly item called "three perfect days" describing an idyllic weekend adventure to [wherever]; obviously, it serves to reinforce their business (though weekend jaunters tend to be relatively low yield), but it does give you a pretty good idea of what kind of trip you could do.
Post a Comment
<< Home