"ian field" wrote in message
...

"Arfa Daily" wrote in message
...


Actually, the T @ H editorial team, was only anything to do with the
original team of John and Tessa, for a very brief period, before they
decided that it was not for them, due to a conflict of personalities with
one of the owners.

It did occur to me that something was wrong there - the absence of J & T
should have been a clue.


I think that they were only directly involved for the first two issues,
before there was a problem with one of the owners that J & T perceived as
editorial interference. Sort of - either they had been hired for their
editing expertise, or not ...


Originally, when the editing of TeleMag was brought in-house, John and
Tessa were summoned to the offices ( they were both freelancers ) and
just told that their services would no longer be required. No notice
period, no sorry. Their contracts were just terminated. Both of them were
actually very upset about the way that they were treated, and that was a
lot to do with why Steve, Michael and Elaine got together to start T @
H. They felt that John and Tessa still had a valuable contribution to
make to a trade magazine. They were thus hired to edit the new mag, but
unfortunately, the owners' ideas for it didn't really match with John and
Tessa's editing style, so there came a parting of the ways. That left the
owners with the whole task of both running and editing the magazine, as
well as dealing with the contributors. This on top of their normal work.

So T at H might still be going if they'd made more of an effort to get
along with J & T?!


This is my feeling, but from talking to both sides, I think that J & T felt
that they could continue to assemble the mag along the lines of TeleMag,
particularly as almost all of the potential contributors were those of us
already well known to them, but one of the owners, who had some experience
of the magazine world, felt that the owners themselves needed to be fully in
charge of content and presentation, to protect their financial investment. I
can kind of see where they might feel that, but by the same token, I think
that up until that point, TeleMag had been the single best edited and
presented electronics trade mag on the market, and I think that was entirely
due to the stewardship of John and Tessa. Incidentally, you may be
interested to know that the reason the decline set in for TeleMag as a
commercially viable publication, was that it had not had an advertising
manager assigned to it for 2 years ...


This is the main reason that it went to bi-monthly publication, which I
think was perhaps a contributory factor in its current status. I also
found that having Elaine as a " commissioning editor " made it difficult
to write for them. With John and Tessa, they always accepted everything I
wrote ' as was ' and tended to fit it in to the magazine without making
many if any changes to the running length. I'm pretty sure that you
probably used to find the same thing, as your monitor fault reports,
which I always enjoyed reading, used to be relatively long and detailed.
When I was contributing fault reports, I only used to bother sending in
the interesting ones, and used to make a point of detailing the
diagnostic methods that I had used to arrive at the cause of the problem.
I could never see the point in the " This one wouldn't play discs, so I
replaced the laser ... " variety of report.

While I was googling to try and find info on what was going on I stumbled
on a forum devoted to the impending demise of Television, T at H got quite
a few mentions and wherever EE,s name got mentioned it was in a negative
context, it was mentioned that she had made one or two insulting comments
in her regular column - I think the words we "I think she needs to work
on her people skills"! Your point about editing is well taken, my only 3
fault reports before publication ceased no longer said the same thing that
I originally wrote!

Yes indeedy. I got off on the wrong foot with her, and she actually rang me
up at home. It was to do with the series on valve amps that I had in hand.
This was originally intended to be a follow on to the original article on
getting PA amp repair work that I did for TeleMag. John had already accepted
it in principle, in readiness for publication, and we had all agreed that it
should now go over into the new mag, but EE had other ideas, and decided
that no long-running series were going to go in, as the punters would get
bored with them. She sent me quite a pointed e-mail about it, and suggested
that I produced a pitch to put to her, which she would then review, and
decide how many words that I had to write if she deemed it of sufficient
interest. I told her that I was not one of the professional writers that she
was used to working with, and that I could not work under those sorts of
constraints. I told her that the first couple of parts were already written,
and said just what I wanted them to, so if that was not good enough then we
just wouldn't bother. John was really upset with this, and I think that the
episode only sought to underline the bad feelings that J & T were already
beginning to have. It was after that that I just dealt with Steve. He just
went ahead and told me to carry on submitting in the normal way, and he
would edit them. I still finished up having to rewrite major tracts to
satisfy their requirements, and as you say, it no longer really quite said
what I had intended. As it turned out, we never got as far as part 3 going
to print, although they still have it, so you never know, one day it might
see the light of day again ... The fault reports section changed
considerably when EE's old boy took over the handling of them, and some of
mine that I had submitted, were severely edited, to the point where I felt
that it was pointless to publish them.



However. my descriptive style of writing didn't work well with Elaine,
and she was forever trying to cut down the length and content, which in
turn, didn't sit well with me, so I finished up dealing exclusively with
Steve, who was the technical editor.

She didn't cut down her own contribution though! The few times I bothered
reading her column it contributed (along with other aspects of the
magazines presentation) a feeling of "where's the recies & knitting
patterns?! It was I think, one of the owners who took part in the forum I
found who commented that in one branch of WHS he found T at H amongst the
knitting pattern magazines - an easy mistake to make!


Oddly enough, you are right on the money there, as I understand that she is
or was directly involved professionally, with a knitting or sewing magazine.
I too found her articles a little incongruous in an electronics mag, to put
it politely. Also, as she was setting herself up as an editor, on occasion,
her grammar left a little to be desired ...


At the end of the day, I think that they had to appeal to too wide an
audience to make it financially viable. This led to the mag having a bit
of an identity crisis I think. I continued to write my stuff as technical
articles, aimed at service engineers, but whilst 'on the street'
technophiles might have found the content of them interesting, I fear
that the detail would have gone over their heads. The final nail in the
coffin of T @ H in its paper form, was the distribution costs via
W.H.Smith wholesale, and for this reason, I can't see it ever
re-surfacing as a mag in print. Like you, I also like to read 'proper'
paper journals, but I don't think that we are ever going to do that again
for a trade mag serving our business

There were a couple of projects I wanted to send in for component testing
gadgets, but they involved running equipment made from salvaged monitor
components directly from the mains, these would have been no problem for
experienced service engineers that were targeted by Television Magazine
but would have been courting certain disaster if presented to the casual
interest audience T at H seemed to be aiming for!
...

Still, hats off to the T @ H team, and I am very sorry that in the end,
they didn't get to fully realise their dream, and ended up personally so
far out of pocket on the venture. It took a lot of guts to have a go, and
it was a shame that it came to an end just as I felt it was beginning to
find its place in the market.

The fact that I took out a subscription at the outset was largely out of a
sense of loyalty to J & T, now they've gone the magazine would have to be
pretty damn good to keep me paying for it, I wonder if I echo the
sentiments of other readers? There's no doubt about the dire state of the
servicing trade, I've not been actively involved in monitor repair for a
while now. All said and done the state of the industry is the biggest
single factor in what happened to both magazines, but I have a suspicion
that if T at H had retained J & T's editorial style they may have fared
much better - possibly even prevailed.

Agreed. I think that given time, the original reader base would have all
migrated across to
T @ H, and probably the advertisers as well, but I guess that it was such a
financial burden and gamble, time wasn't on their side. The trade is dire at
times, for sure, but it's treated me pretty well over the years, and
continues to do so. These days, I do only trade audio work, and am probably
the only person in my area doing it, so tend to get the work from all of the
independant shops that still take such items in. Along with some commercial
vending machine boards that I do in large quantities, there is enough work
to keep me and my son going, and to pay for a couple of stateside holidays a
year. I don't know how much longer that will keep up for, but it's not
showing any signs of letting up at the moment.

There are rumours that Television Magazine has already been bought, and
appears to be in the same stable as Electronics World, my newsagent tells
me that he gets notification from the distributor if a magazine ceases
publication, so he may be able to give me more info after he's contacted
them on Monday.
That's interesting to hear. I understand that the title has been bought and
'parked', but I am not sure whether that is with any serious intention of
resuming publication, or a " just in case " scenario. I would like to know
what you find out on this score. Mail me direct off-group if you like, as
this thread is starting to get a bit long, and probably wandering a bit OT
now.

Arfa