Source:
http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2003/10/10/6/?nc=1
NEWINGTON, CT, Oct 10, 2003--After completing 43 years of
publication, 73 Amateur Radio Today magazine is calling it quits.
Plans to publish a joint October/November issue fell through this week,
and the September 2003 issue was the magazine's last. According to
self-proclaimed "El Supremo and Founder" Wayne S. Green II,
W2NSD, it was a simple matter of economics.
"After failing a last minute effort to collect on some larger
accounts receivable we decided yesterday to throw in the towel--that the
September issue will have to be the last," Green told ARRL October
9. "SK after 43 years of publishing."
The decision to pull the plug apparently did not come easily. After
telling the League and others a few days earlier that 73 would
cease publication because of insufficient advertising revenue, Green
rebounded with plans to put out an October/November issue if 73
could collect the delinquent accounts. "With the hobby slowly dying,
these are difficult times," he said. "But then, we've been
through difficult times before."
Green's October 9 statement appears to be the final word on the matter,
however. It also seems to leave remaining staff members and contributing
editors--freelancers--out in the cold. One columnist reports not having
been paid for several months of contributions.
The first issue of 73 was published in October 1960 from what
Green--a former editor of CQ--once described as "a small,
dingy apartment" on E 15th Street in Brooklyn, New York. Late-night
radio personality Jean Shepherd, K2ORS (SK), was listed as a contributing
editor. Copies cost 37 cents apiece, and subscriptions were $3 a year. By
the time of its demise, the larger-format 73 Amateur Radio
Today--which contained approximately the same number of pages as the
first issue (64)--sold for $3.95 per issue on the newsstand, and an
annual subscription was $24.97.
The magazine--which became virtually inseparable from Wayne Green
himself--was a pioneer promoter of SSB, FM, solid-state, easy
construction projects and the marriage of personal computing and Amateur
Radio. His interest in microcomputing led Green in 1975 to found
Byte, a magazine devoted to the then-nascent and largely
do-it-yourself computer hobby. He sold the magazine three years later,
and it continued publication until 1998.
Since the summer of 1962, 73 has been based in Peterborough, New
Hampshire. After searching for bigger digs than what Brooklyn had to
offer, Green determined that New Hampshire offered the best of all
possible worlds, including cooler temperatures, cheap land, low taxes and
access to the big city (Boston). For a time, the magazine flourished. At
the peak of its popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, individual issues of
73 totaled more than 300 pages of ads, articles and commentary.
Heading each issue was Green's inimitable "Never Say Die"--some
would say never-ending--editorial, in which he rarely missed an
opportunity to tweak the ARRL and his magazine competitors for their
perceived shortcomings.
From day one, Green was the virtual heart and soul of 73, but for
a short time--from the spring of 1985 until almost a year later--he was
absent from the magazine, which, at that point, he no longer owned. CW
Communications had acquired 73 along with Green's computer
publications a few years earlier. He returned in full control of the
publication in its March 1986 issue, again vowing to turn the competition
on its ear.
QST Editor Steve Ford, WB8IMY, says 73 published his first
article as a freelance writer in the mid-1970s. "I was saddened to
hear that 73 has ceased publishing," Ford said. "I was
an avid 73 reader in 1971 when I was first licensed. Wayne's
excitement about the growing amateur FM repeater phenomenon at the time
was infectious."
Green's 73 editorials and regular round of hamfest and convention
personal appearances--he was a Hamvention forum staple for
years--originally concentrated on Amateur Radio and his ideas to improve,
advance and grow it. In more recent years, however, they've veered into
conspiracy theories, cures for cancer, AIDS and other ailments and
Green's proliferation of book titles on those topics. Green has been an
occasional guest on the Coast
to Coast AM overnight radio talk program once hosted by Art Bell,
W6OBB.
In 1996, Wayne Green Inc filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, but the filing
did not affect 73. New Hampshire newspaper accounts at the time
indicated that Green's wife, Sherry Smythe-Green, had purchased 73
two years earlier, and it's believed the magazine remained in her hands.
The affected Green subsidiaries were Almost Free CDs, Uncle Wayne's
Books, Creative Music, N.H. Language Systems and Green With Envy.
In 2001, CQ named Green to its inaugural Amateur Radio Hall of
Fame, citing his roles as founding editor and publisher of 73,
former CQ editor/columnist and publisher of Byte.
Green said he would continue his
essays on his Web site "for
those subscribers who mainly bought the magazine for them." He told
ARRL that no definite arrangements have been made yet about how to handle
outstanding 73 subscriptions. He said he does plan at some point
to make available on a Web site "articles of lasting interest."
CQ Publisher Dick Ross, K2MGA, called 73 and Green
"significant contributors to the history of our hobby" for more
than four decades. "There's no joy to be taken from the passing of
73 magazine," Ross said. "The loss of any publication
serving Amateur Radio leaves all of us a bit poorer."
Through the pages of 73, amateurs were able to access "a
curious mixture of new ideas, not the least of which was the technology
and fun of FM repeaters, which Wayne pushed relentlessly until the rest
of the ham publishing community finally woke up," Ross said.
"Thank you, Wayne, for 43 entertaining, informative, sometimes
infuriating, and always interesting years of 73. We'll genuinely
miss it."
