Is it me or is MCN getting increasingly boring to read these days? I seem to read less and less of it each week, there are more write ups on 125's, overly technical articles and this week pages and pages about Chinese bikes. Yawn, yawn!!
I gave up all magazines years ago. I just can't raise the energy to read them. They seem utterly superficial. Long live novels and interesting non-fiction books. I'm a Waterstones and Amazon fan.
Stopped buying mcn when it got to £1 a copy. My brother still buys it and I occasionally look through it, and it still ain't worth a quid.
I get BIKE every month but I've not bought MCN for ages. The main reason for buying it always used to be the bike ads but the Internet makes that superfluous.
Bought it yesterday as I was sat in A&E for an extended period waiting to be attended to, bored stupid, and it really is poor. Although it did provoke a sardonic snigger when I came across an article on "road test clichés" .....
I'm onto four magazine titles a month, which leaves me just about enough time to get a book in there as well. MCN is an interesting one. Their website is cluttered with ads, which it has to be in order to help fund the site itself, but ultimately its there to make you go and by the actual paper. There is only so much you can write about motorcycles, which is why most of the paper is reviewing the past weeks races etc. The tech race of the last twenty+ years has slowed right down, we all know that, with manufacturers evolving their bikes rather than rebuilding them, which subsequently narrows the scope for the editorial. Do I buy MCN? No. Do I go to the website? yes. I really love motorcycle journalism as I just love reading about bikes, but I get everything I want and more from my monthly titles. Its strange, but its getting to the stage where MCN is competing with its own sister publications. I wouldn't be surprised in a year or so, that the format of MCN changes to reflect that. Just my opinion by the way
The same is true of the magazines, but they are infinitely more interesting. Perhaps MCN should change to a fortnightly.
anything and everything published by emap is dumbed down to appease the masses the stupid and the advertisers mcn aka the comic featured ashby folville a while back as a bike meet, there were hundreds of rare and interesting vehicles, so they photographed and featured 4 people with universal japanese inline fours, was the photographer blind stupid lazy or just ignorant given what was available to be photographed bike magazine is little better the only serious part of it Ogri has had enough taste to migrate elsewhere
I've stopped buying mags like superbike, fast bikes etc because I'm of the age now where I'm fed up reading about the latest elctro gizmo'd up sportsbike that will shave 0.3 off your lap time, I'm much more into Practical Sportsbike ,a mag about real world bikes you can actually work on.
Agree with you on this one, but is'nt it ironic that we find the articles interesting even though they are largely about making the bikes go faster and handle better.:biggrin:
Yup, I first started buying bike mags in the very early 90's - well before I was old enough to ride. Practical Sportsbikes features those same bikes Performance bikes featured when new in the early 90's. Right now there is a Performance Bikes from 1991 sat beside me, with a Bimota tesi on the cover. For me, late 80's and early 90's sportsbikes are where its at - frankly the latest R1's and fireblades don't really interest me past the current R1's interesting engine, and superbike racing.
Me too. I have the ones I love / like like on subscription (Bike, Performance Bikes, Practical Sportsbike, Motorcycle Racer). I do a lot of travelling by train (up and down to London from Taunton at least twice a week) so I even end-up buying the ones that I don't like! (Ride, Fast Bikes, SuperBike, Motorcycle Sport and Leisure, MCN etc.). I only draw the line at Back Street Heroes, Scooterist, and Dirt Bike! I am an addict! I even have quite a collection of foreign bike mags from my various business trips abroad - I have some great English language ones from India with Ducati road-tests in them. MCN is undoubtedly pure crap except for Colin Edward's little agony uncle column - absolute pure gold! I hope they publish them all as a book one day.
I get Bike, Superbike & Benzina on subscription, Superbike cost me £26 for 2 years IIRC so it was a no brainer. Bike came with a "free" torque wrench (OK-ish, does the job & is, amazingly, correctly calibrated). Benzina is the pick of the crop though, a truly excellent read from cover to cover. Benzina magazine, motoring gifts and clothing for men and women | Team Benzina
Its an interesting point of view, with valid points, but the editorial staff at the Bauer mags (formally emap as you correctly stated) could say that for them, Classic Bike would cover the older bikes, which may not be the brief for MCN. Practical Sportsbikes is an excellent magazine, especially as Ive only been riding since 2007, so for me its a history lesson, but this one I actually want to turn up to. All the magazines I read as produced my Bauer and I've read the odd issue of Fast Bikes but don't like the way that they insist on associating bikes with women in high heels and bikinis. Its too much like FHM or any other lads mag, which lets face it, are shit. I think all 'popular' magazines are dumbed down and for the very reason they are successful is because they do appeal to the masses, which is why the advertisers are interested, not the other way around. You do get very unique magazines aimed at a very small target audience, like Performance Ford by Unity Media or Land Rover Monthly by Dennis, but these are only small titles and will never generate a huge revenue for the publisher, which when all is said and done, is their only reason for the magazine existing
