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An interview with the New Owner

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An interview with the New Owner
Posted by "JaBear" on Monday, May 20, 2024 5:11 AM
 
An interview with Craig Fuller, the New Owner, and David Popp.

Having thought about what I’ve viewed, I’m looking at a glass half full.
 
 half full glass by Bear, on Flickr
 
Cheers, the Bear.Smile

"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."

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Posted by fiatfan on Monday, May 20, 2024 7:08 AM

The future looks promising but some patience will be needed.  Fingers crossed.

Tom

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Go Big Red!

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Posted by Pruitt on Monday, May 20, 2024 8:53 AM

Having been one of the minions impacted by mergers and aquisitions in the past, I'm cautiously optimistic.

Reality often does not reflect the goals, hopes, and outright hyperbole of the early days.

We'll see.

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Posted by BATMAN on Monday, May 20, 2024 10:24 AM

It will be interesting to see where we are at in two years. Craig Fuller said they have made 20+ acquisitions. It would be interesting to see what staffing changes have occurred at those companies in the two years following the takeover. If you are not current in communications, you will be replaced. 

Reading Craig's body language as the questions were presented to him was interesting. I saw sincerity in his answers to these guys are clueless facial expressions as he answered.

Fingers crossed for the future.

 

Brent

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Posted by tstage on Monday, May 20, 2024 7:07 PM

I only remember one question asked by the host, Ken Patterson, during the entire interview (Time mark: 24:48)...

"What's going to happen to the [MR&T] layout?"

Some of the other probable questions were actually answered by Craig, as he was sharing how the acquisition came about and what concerns he had gleaned from "talk" on the internet.

To be honest, I would have MUCH rather preferred David Popp give a solo interview with Craig Fuller.  I think the questions would have been more insightful and there would have been far less gushing.  I found the latter fairly annoying from the host.

I do hope the promised improvements materialize.  For now, I will take everything with a grain of salt.

Tom

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Posted by nyoandw on Monday, May 20, 2024 7:45 PM

Those guys doing the interview certainly are not journalists! 

One thing that made me kind of sad was Popp saying the staff was doing everything they could to keep MR going - it really sounds like it was on the edge of getting shut down. 

Does anyone know who owns Kalmbach?  Popp also made it sound like the owners were really looking at the magazines as a source of cash and not ere not really interested in the product itself.  Also pretty amazing Kalmbach sold the building before they had buyers for the publications. Based on that I bet the magazines sold at virtual fire-sale prices. 

Glad David Popp sounds like he'll definitely be staying on!

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Posted by hon30critter on Monday, May 20, 2024 10:57 PM

I think that the odds are greatly in favour of Craig Fuller succeeding. He has done it before with several other magazines so this is not a stab in the dark, and he is obviously prepared to put money where his mouth is.

Cheers!!

Dave

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Posted by hon30critter on Monday, May 20, 2024 11:06 PM

tstage
To be honest, I would have MUCH rather preferred David Popp give a solo interview with Craig Fuller.  I think the questions would have been more insightful and there would have been far less gushing.  I found the latter fairly annoying from the host.

Hi Tom,

I totally agree! The lack of professionalism on the part of the hosts was really hard to get through. I ended up skipping through the video to watch only the segments with Craig speaking. And, speaking of David Popp, I was embarassed by the way the hosts failed to engage him almost totally.

Cheers!!

Dave

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Posted by YoHo1975 on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 1:17 AM

hon30critter

 

 
tstage
To be honest, I would have MUCH rather preferred David Popp give a solo interview with Craig Fuller.  I think the questions would have been more insightful and there would have been far less gushing.  I found the latter fairly annoying from the host.

 

Hi Tom,

I totally agree! The lack of professionalism on the part of the hosts was really hard to get through. I ended up skipping through the video to watch only the segments with Craig speaking. And, speaking of David Popp, I was embarassed by the way the hosts failed to engage him almost totally.

Cheers!!

Dave

 

 

It's a podcast and one of the most popular ones for model railroading out there. Not a rigorous journal. 

Ken sets the perfect tone for a podcast situation.

It was also an extremely fortunate get that Craig and David were willing to go on at all. Kalmbach doesn't exactly have a Podcast to leverage here and running the interview themselves would have looked far more self serving than going over to Ken who is somewhat affiliated with a competitor. It was a gushy interview, but is legitimized by the venue. 

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Posted by wjstix on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 10:25 AM

To be fair, they're not actually journalists. Ken is a photographer / professional modeller, one of the guys is a chef, another owns a company that buys and sells used model/toy trains. 

Stix
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Posted by richhotrain on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 1:18 PM

wjstix

To be fair, they're not actually journalists. Ken is a photographer / professional modeller, one of the guys is a chef, another owns a company that buys and sells used model/toy trains. 

 

That may be true, Stix, but you don't need to be a journalist to ask meaningful questions.

Rich

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Posted by tstage on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 2:26 PM

richhotrain
wjstix

To be fair, they're not actually journalists. Ken is a photographer / professional modeller, one of the guys is a chef, another owns a company that buys and sells used model/toy trains.  

Rich

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Posted by AEP528 on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 3:05 PM

I'm really at a loss how someone could read literally any construction article on the MR&T and think it was modular.

Perhaps now others on this forum will stop blaming the editorial staff for the current state of the magazine?

One thing I found interesting is Ken's liking and promoting of print magazines given that the owner/editor of the online magazine he's closely associated with is heavily anti-print.

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Posted by "JaBear" on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 3:26 PM

 Forum by Bear, on Flickr

"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."

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Posted by MARTIN STATION on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 3:43 PM

 What I really find ironic is that Flying and Trains are now owned by the same company. I spent 25 years working in aviation and was an avid fan of Flying magazine. There was a gentleman by the name of Len Morgan who wrote a monthly article for them based on his experence as an airline pilot for Braniff Airways and his experience as a pilot in WW2. Len was the brother of David Morgan of Trains magazine.

 I still remember after Davids passing, Len wrote in his column about his brother's love of trains and his of flying and their quest to understand each other. It was a very wonderful tribute to David, I just wish both could have seen this day where both of their magazines would come under the ownership of the same publisher.

Ralph

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Posted by MidlandMike on Tuesday, May 21, 2024 8:45 PM

nyoandw
Those guys doing the interview certainly are not journalists! ...

An yet they scored a 40 minute interview.  

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Posted by dknelson on Wednesday, May 22, 2024 5:44 PM

MARTIN STATION

 What I really find ironic is that Flying and Trains are now owned by the same company. I spent 25 years working in aviation and was an avid fan of Flying magazine. There was a gentleman by the name of Len Morgan who wrote a monthly article for them based on his experence as an airline pilot for Braniff Airways and his experience as a pilot in WW2. Len was the brother of David Morgan of Trains magazine.

 I still remember after Davids passing, Len wrote in his column about his brother's love of trains and his of flying and their quest to understand each other. It was a very wonderful tribute to David, I just wish both could have seen this day where both of their magazines would come under the ownership of the same publisher.

Ralph 

You might be aware that Kalmbach DID publish an aviation magazine, briefly in the 1970s: Airliners International.  The title stated the focus so this did not cover military or private planes.  Evidently it did not sell enough for Kalmbach to keep it going.  That was the same fate as their 1950s Ships and Sailing magazine, and of their Better Camping magazine in the early 1960s.  

Dave Nelson

 

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Posted by MARTIN STATION on Wednesday, May 22, 2024 7:57 PM

dknelson

 

 
MARTIN STATION

 What I really find ironic is that Flying and Trains are now owned by the same company. I spent 25 years working in aviation and was an avid fan of Flying magazine. There was a gentleman by the name of Len Morgan who wrote a monthly article for them based on his experence as an airline pilot for Braniff Airways and his experience as a pilot in WW2. Len was the brother of David Morgan of Trains magazine.

 I still remember after Davids passing, Len wrote in his column about his brother's love of trains and his of flying and their quest to understand each other. It was a very wonderful tribute to David, I just wish both could have seen this day where both of their magazines would come under the ownership of the same publisher.

Ralph 

 

 

You might be aware that Kalmbach DID publish an aviation magazine, briefly in the 1970s: Airliners International.  The title stated the focus so this did not cover military or private planes.  Evidently it did not sell enough for Kalmbach to keep it going.  That was the same fate as their 1950s Ships and Sailing magazine, and of their Better Camping magazine in the early 1960s.  

Dave Nelson

 

 

 

No David, I did not know that, thank you! I was just speaking of the two companies that the brothers worked for now being under the same publisher. It's a shame that Airliners International didn't work out for Kalmbach being that there were a lot more airlines back in the 70's, like railroads then also. And a lot of companies that sold airline model kits so they must have had some kind of following?

Ralph

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Posted by AEP528 on Thursday, May 23, 2024 8:08 AM

 Forum by Bear, on Flickr

 

Because the entire interview was marketing speak - "Trust me, we're going to make everything better! (But check back in a year.)" As Ken even noted, it was all the right answers.

There were no real plans outlined, no specific actions described, no addressing the lack of advertising, nothing. 

Even the question about the MR&T has an odd answer, when he said he didn't know if the whole layout could be kept in Wisconsin or moved to Firecrown in Tennessee. Why would that even be a consideration if the entire staff is staying in Wisconsin?

As far as print magazine readership growing, how? Hobby stores are disappearing, and most stores around me have eliminated the dedicated magazine aisle. That's how I discovered MR years ago. Other than the few Barnes and Noble stores in our area, I don't know where else to find magazines. I guess some subscriptions would come from finding magazines online, but I think physical access is more important.

(This post has been edited and updated)

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Posted by dehusman on Thursday, May 23, 2024 12:10 PM

That was my question.  A lot of positive thoughts.  Yes they are going to improve the paper quality, and have lots of great photos.  Subscriptions to MR have been slipping for years, no secret there.  However in all the threads on multiple forums about why people stopped subscribing to MR, paper quality and lack of photos was never mentioned as reason for not subscribing anymore.

Popp said there had been some frustration of the staff but never went into details and the podcasters never followed up with any questions.  It would have been interesting to know what the staff wanted to do that they couldn't and whether the new publishers were going to let them do whatever it was that they were prevented from doing by the previous publishers.

Do they know why they lost subscribers?  What have they done or plan to do to recapture the subscribers they previously lost?  What are their plans to attract new subscribers?

Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com

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Posted by hon30critter on Thursday, May 23, 2024 7:30 PM

Hi Bear,

I agree that the podcast hosts deserve a lot of credit for organizing the interview, but that doesn't change the fact that the podcast was poorly done. Watching the hosts performances were difficult for me, to the point where I nearly turned the video off.

I  hope they see the comments and take them to heart. If they want to expand their audience they simply have to up their game.

Cheers!!

Dave

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Posted by maxman on Thursday, May 23, 2024 7:55 PM

hon30critter
Watching the hosts performances were difficult for me, to the point where I nearly turned the video off.

Maybe a little off topic, but I wasn't sure what a "podcast" really is.  I did find this definition: " For listeners, a podcast operates like an on-demand Internet radio show. You can listen to episodes on a podcast app or subscribe to podcasts online".

If that's really the case, if that was a true podcast we wouldn't have seen the performers to be able to critique them.

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Posted by rrebell on Friday, May 24, 2024 8:25 AM

There were no solid plans because it was an opertunity buy. You play with the big stuff you need to be nimble and grab deals as they appear, same in real estate.

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Posted by Overmod on Friday, May 24, 2024 8:36 AM

maxman
Maybe a little off topic, but I wasn't sure what a "podcast" really is.

In the early days of streaming protocols over the Internet, one of the major 'solutions' to the problem of Napster, ripping, piracy and DMCA and all that rot came the introduction of the iPod as a walled-garden MP3 player with implicit copy protection.  This connected to a computer (via stuff kludged into iTunes, the supporting app) and incidentally allowed streamed content made on the Internet to be downloaded.  Content providers who wanted to provide a regular program stream -- what would be called 'broadcasting' if done over the air on radio or TV -- could provide a stream that would be automatically saved and made available, a bit like timeshifting with a programmed VCR.  Because it was the equivalent of 'broadcasting', Apple made the pun that it was 'podcasting' (since you essentially needed an iPod or software equivalent to make the magic happen...)

These things now have no link to iPods, and the smartphone revolution made the things functionally obsolescent in a variety of amusing ways (the name now survives mostly as the pun on it for tablet-size devices, the iPad).

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Posted by richhotrain on Friday, May 24, 2024 8:41 AM

rrebell

There were no solid plans because it was an opertunity buy. You play with the big stuff you need to be nimble and grab deals as they appear, same in real estate.

 

I think that you may just be right on this. I thought the same thing when I first heard about the acquisition and even more so after watching the podcast.

Rich

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Posted by thomas81z on Monday, May 27, 2024 4:21 PM

I get a good feeling about this, his body languge says alot.

lets be honest it was a slow funeral procession

before the sale

 but i think this bodes well

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Posted by betamax on Tuesday, May 28, 2024 5:36 AM

Overmod

These things now have no link to iPods, and the smartphone revolution made the things functionally obsolescent in a variety of amusing ways (the name now survives mostly as the pun on it for tablet-size devices, the iPad).

 
At least iTunes allowed you to download a podcast and transfer it to a USB stick, DVD or CD and listen to it in your car, or elsewhere, with the appropriate hardware.
 
Apple Podcast doesn't allow that, and it replaces iTunes' podcast feature. Many other services don't allow it either. You need a device with a network connection to listen now, instead of just copying them to a suitable medium.
 
(Podcast does download the entire episode, but extracting it isn't exactly easy or convenient).
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Posted by wjstix on Tuesday, May 28, 2024 9:42 AM

maxman
If that's really the case, if that was a true podcast we wouldn't have seen the performers to be able to critique them.

The term "podcast" has come to mean any kind of program not made by a broadcast or cable network or station, but just by "regular folks". As noted, it originally meant sound-only (sort of like radio programs) but now the term is sometimes also used to describe a program just made for viewing on YouTube. There some programs that are available both as sound-only podcasts and on YouTube with visuals.

Stix
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Posted by AEP528 on Tuesday, June 11, 2024 7:44 AM

rrebell

There were no solid plans because it was an opertunity buy. You play with the big stuff you need to be nimble and grab deals as they appear, same in real estate.

 

And now here we are, weeks later, with ZERO COMMUNICATION TO SUBSCRIBERS.

There hasn't even been a marketing email since 5/20. If it wasn't for the video feed showing Cody working I would be questioning if the staff was really still employed.

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Posted by AEP528 on Tuesday, June 11, 2024 2:57 PM

I realized today that the advertising situation has gotten worse: March 2024 was the last issue with an MRC ad.

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