On 08/23/2010 07:14 PM, JJZolx wrote: > With Stereophile the more widespread allegation has always been in > regard to _which_ products are chosen for review, as the overwhelming > majority of reviews are positive and amount to free publicity.
Which is yet another statement that reflects a complete lack of understanding of the business. Of course its free publicity. If you do not understand that, you probably should not be reading the magazines. Do you think its likely that your next girlfriend will look like the women in Playboy? None of the buff books pay for products that they review. They rely upon the manufacturer and/or distributor to loan the review units. When they want to say "this car/amp/camera sucks" they have to encode it or they won't get any more cars/amps/cameras from that brand ever again. This is not good for business. As with the Chevys and Toyotas in Road-and-Track, no one wants to review products people actually buy, the review target that are chosen are the ones that the "product" (aka subscribers and newsstand purchasers) expect and want to see. All of the reviews are mostly positive. For every product/car/stereo. Any negative comments are buried in the "elbow" of the article, and if you don't read carefully, you may miss them. When a car magazine writes: "Porsche charges a lot of money for the optional Brembo brakes" they mean "Porsche is grossly overcharging even their usual gullible fanboys on these brakes that perhaps 1% of drivers can appreciate". The only buff book articles that do any serious effort to say negative things about reviewed products are the head-to-head comparisons, like the "best sports sedans near $50K" that Car-and-driver does. And that is only because if they compare three sedans, two have to come in someplace other than first. Even then, they use very positive language for the negative comments. If you complain that Stereophile and TAS review too many $20K amps and $5K vinyl cartridges, then you have exactly the same problem with Car-and-Driver and Road-&-Track reviewing MB-SLR, Ferrari, and Porsches. At least in audio gear, there are niche manufacturers, I would hardly call Mercedes Benz a niche manufacturer, even though all of their cars are priced about twice what I think any car is worth. (and I drive a $40K car) -- Pat Farrell http://www.pfarrell.com/ _______________________________________________ Touch mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/touch
