by The Editors on April 18, 2009
Vancouver, BC resident Douglas Coupland has written many fine books. Great to read, hard to remember. Polaroids From The Dead is one of our favorites. But look at what is up on the homepage of his website right now. This:
Wait a minute, aren’t those are our logos? The image is from part of a new series of art pieces titled Mom and Dad. And it reminds us of a quote from his book Microserfs:
“Should some future historian ever feel the need to duplicate a San Fracisco coffee bar circa “The Dawn of Multimedia,” they will require the following: thrashed PowerBooks covered with snowboarding and Chiquita banana stickers. . .” Douglas Coupland, Microserfs, pg. 115.
That was written in 1994. Looks like Douglas has been stuck on boardsports for quite a while now. Then again, so have we.
[Link: Douglas Coupland via Gnarcore.com]
by The Editors on April 16, 2009
Russel Crowe says that work on the Bra Boys film that may be his feature directorial debut is progressing nicely, according to Sky News.
“We are on our third different take on the story, probably on our second draft of our third take,” he said.
“We approached it in one way and it worked and encapsulated it nicely but it left too many things on the table so we’ve tried it a second way and had the same result. . . . We’re now in a place where we’re trying it a third way and it’s a little more satisfying in terms of the punch of the overall film.”
The film is not based on the documentary, but on the best-selling book My Brothers Keeper, by investigative reporters Charles Miranda and Angelea Kamper and follows the story of “standover man” Anthony Hines, his meeting with infamous Sydney surfing gang ‘the Bra Boys’, and his killing. According to Russel, the film will not start Mark Wahlberg and instead will feature Australian actors.
“This is a great Australian story and it belongs to the Australian film industry and it’s all well and good to finance it from overseas because film is an international medium but we’ve got great actors in our country.”
[Link: Sky News]
by The Editors on April 15, 2009
According to a story in the Sydney Morning Herald Billabong is a nightmare brand for ad agencies and television networks because they are playing by their own rules all the way around.
It does not make TV commercials, it does not book space on television. And its magazine ads are produced by its own team. Billabong is not just a surf brand, it is a media company, says the person in charge of producing the hours of surf-related content. . . “This just ups the ante,” says Scott Wallace of the deal announced last week with Sony. “We are turning into a media company as well as a clothing company.”
Wallace, formerly with IMG, and now VP New Media and Strategic Partnerships, appears to be putting Billabong on the right track. As we’ve said several times: if you want to control your message, be the messenger. And it looks like Wallace is doing just that.
[Link: Sydney Morning Herald]
by The Editors on April 15, 2009
The Magazine Publishers of America just released their print advertising numbers for Q1 2009 (Jan. to Mar. 2009 vs. 2008) and as might be expected things are not looking good. On average pages in the titles tracked by the MPA are down 26.1 percent and revenue is down 20.6 percent.
In the action sports magazine space Transworld Media has the only titles tracked and advertising pages were down across the board. Here are Transworld Media advertising page totals for Q1 2009 as reported by the MPA.
2009 2008 %Change
TRANSWORLD SKATEBOARDING 304.15 369.17 -17.6
TRANSWORLD SNOWBOARDING 359.48 429.11 -16.2
TRANSWORLD SURF 195.54 279.69 -30.1
RIDE BMX 75.16 93.34 -19.5
TRANSWORLD MOTOCROSS 244.17 259.04 -5.7
According to the MPA, in the first three months of this year Transworld Media print advertising was down a total of 251.85 pages when compared to the same period in 2008. Assuming that a page in the magazines cost on average $2,500 this drop in ad pages represents about $630,000 in revenue.
On a positive note: when compared to the magazine market in general Transworld’s titles are doing well, about 10 percent ahead of the market in every mag but Transword Surf. So by that metric, things are looking pretty good.
Then again, we don’t think the print advertising market will ever get better.
[Link: Magazine Publishers of America]
by The Editors on April 9, 2009
The Surfing Heritage Foundation and Nike 6.0 are presenting a three part event on the fourth Friday of April, May, and June where the photo editors of the big three surf magazines (Surf, Surfing, and Surfer) will present a slide show and discuss the ins-and-outs of dealing with surf photographers and explain how they choose photos in a way that keeps all their advertisers happy all the time.
The line-up looks something like this:
Fri., April 22: Aaron Checkwood/ Transworld Surf
Fri., May 22: Pete Taras/ Surfing Magazine
Fri., June 26: Grant Ellis/ Surfer Magazine
Tickets cost $15 and there is limited seating so sign up soon. Just talking about it kind of makes us miss light tables, and seeing those guys hunched over in a dark room illuminated from below. . . we’ll leave it at that.
[Link: Surfing Heritage Foundation via Global Surf News]
by The Editors on April 8, 2009
Surfersvillage and Global Surf News have always bummed us out a little. Their “we post everything and don’t care who we steal it from” mentality made for some great fun in the early days as online editors at certain surf magazines delighted in posting completely bogus stories just to see how quickly the seemingly irony impaired minds behind Global Surf News would pick them up and run with them. Remember the Rip Curl Search at Swami’s story?
But now, with The Surfing Yearbook, Surfer’s Village has done something that we think will become standard for most publications in the action sports media space (if they’re smart). They have collected a year’s worth of posts from their websites, added some great photos, and a bit of commentary and perspective and are releasing it all in a 240-page illustrated coffee table book edited by surf journalist Phil Jarratt. Here’s what he said about it:
“What we’re aiming to do with The Surfing Yearbook is to present a fully-rounded picture of surfing that will appeal to everyone in the sport, culture and industry, from the lowliest grom surfing in his first amateur comp to the high-rolling CEO of the biggest surf corporations. We’re targeting the grom first because we know the CEOs will follow.”
We haven’t seen the $65 book yet (the official launch party is April 9, 2009 at Bells), but the idea seems perfectly timed.
[Link: The Surfing Yearbook]
by The Editors on April 7, 2009
by The Editors on April 7, 2009
Today Dogtown Z-Boy turned director Stacy Peralta is using the first post on his new Huffington Post blog to talk about how difficult it was for him to get his new film Crips and Bloods Made In America financed.
It seemed so obvious to me, a slam-dunk, a downright compelling true life American story. The story of how the Crips and Bloods — two of the world’s most ‘iconic’ gangs — have been allowed to wage a virtual war within one of the richest cities in the world for 4 decades, a war that has taken over 15,000 lives in that time. . . .Yet I couldn’t find any studio or production company interested in financing my documentary. I went door to door, pitching my project to all of the ‘right’ people in Hollywood. All of them said it was a great idea and needed to be done — but no one would write a check.
Couldn’t he just shoot more Burger King commercials? Click the link for the rest of this amazing story.
[Link: The Huffington Post]
by The Editors on April 6, 2009
The old media TV networks seem dead set on doing any deals they can to try to get some kind of traction online. A story on Media Post today announced that Heavy.com (a site that we never have been able to figure out) has entered a deal with Alli: The Alliance of Action Sorts.
While expansion is the name of the game, the wide world of action sports is not exactly new to Heavy according to its co-founder and co-CEO Heavy Simon Assaad, co-founder and co-CEO of Heavy. “Heavy has always been a champion of action sports,” said Assaad. . . One channel will feature exclusive online videos from the Alliance including Dew Tour and other select Alli properties, with the other showcasing public videos from each member of the Alliance, which includes: the Dew Tour; Winter Dew Tour; China Invitational; Lucas Oil AMA Pro Motocross Championship, King of Wake series and the Gatorade Free Flow Tour. Both channels will launch in June, 2009.
True, at one point Heavy had a Transworld action sports channel on their network, but it reportedly never generated much traction or viewers for either brand. The current Alli deal looks to replicate former Heavy deals: Alli gets is two new online video distribution channels on Heavy and Heavy gets more free content to try to sell ads around.
Online distribution deals have always confounded us. The idea of distribution requires at least protected access to an audience. What most media companies seem to forget is that thanks to Google everyone online has basically equal distribution. Sure there are some sites that get more traffic, but if content is online and people want it they will find it no matter where it is. Conversely, if no one wants to look at it, it doesn’t matter what “Internet traffic pipe” you point at it, it’s not going to get viewed.
That’s why most of these “online distribution deals” end up being worth little more than the press release announcing the deal.
[Link: Media Post]
by The Editors on April 3, 2009
When Oprah Winfrey launches her own cable network OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network early 2010 it’s going to be with a little help from a show with the surfing Paskowitz family, according to a story in the Chicago Tribune. The show?
“Surfer’s Healing” is touted as a “docu-soap” tracking former competitive surfer Izzy Paskowitz and his family.
The channel will launch the surfers program into 70 million homes, making it their biggest audience yet.
[Link: Chicago Tribune]
