Pump, I ain't gonna go over this much repeated subject again but suffice to say mate, just because you or other Brits feel there is a need for a UK produced magazine to have a higher UK content is ridiculous and if we followed your line of thinking, we would be broke inside 3 months.
I thank you for comments describing our magazine as 'class' because Beaker and others work extremely hard in putting it together every month and it seems to be an unfortunate fact of life, that people like to make negative comments about things rather than positive ones and so your 'class' comment is much appreciated.
Now, we can do as some people recommend and cover more UK stuff and the other 95% of our readership (non Brits) would soon become somewhat displeased, our advertisers would respond to this and hey presto!, these people might well be happy for a few months reading about UK events but I'd be out of a job, others would be out of a job, and PGi would be no more.
The clue is in our title, we may be a UK produced magazine but we are primarily an international one, hence the 'i' in 'PGi'.
And as such, we have to pitch the content of our magazine toward our major demographic, it's called, 'looking after your customer base' ...
The vast, vast majority of our customer base (industry and reader) is American and only a fool would ignore that demographic, especially if we wish to stay in business.
There is an extremely small niche (and I mean
EXTREMELY small) market for this type UK coverage and I think it's being catered for but try not to make the mistake of imposing minor league publication considerations onto major league magazines.
PGi has been around now for 17 years as the world's premier paintball informational resource and nobody stays around for that long in this marketplace by not knowing what they are doing...... luckily for us, we got an owner of our magazine who knows
EXACTLY what he's doing.
All that being said, we may well be covering more scenario and rec in PGi and this will be in response to a potential future refocusing by the industry.
An important shift in industry thinking is taking place at the moment and is an emergent property of these corporate takeovers and the new management that necessarily has been put into place.
I, for one, think it's a good thing because it will make the industry meaner and leaner and more able to cope in a plateaued marketplace, and as a direct consequence of that new management (and new thinking) the public face of paintball will have its focus maybe less focused on the head (tourney ball) .... we shall see.
For a long time, the are of investing in pro teams etc (tourneyball) is akin to the tale of the 'Emperor's New Clothes' ... it will only take one big industry figure to conclude, 'Hey, where's the bang for our buck here guys, what do we get from investing all this money in pro teams'? ...and when that happens....well, when that happens, the whole house of cards will fall quicker than a pair of George Michael's underpants ......
The only thing that will save this from happening is a new initiative that is at present being created by certain individuals Stateside and as part of that initiative, TV could potentially play the role of White Knight for our pro scene in terms of financial support levels.
We got some tricky and unpredictable times ahead in the short to mid term but let me tell ya something, the face of the industry is changing and with that change comes a whole new opportunity and maybe, just maybe, rec and scenario will be taking up a more prominent position.
