Poor old PCW. Incisive Media, its owner for the last couple of years, shut it down today, declaring it financially unviable in the current economic climate.
A rather familiar refrain just now, so why mention it here? Because PCW is where I got my break, big or otherwise, 12 years ago.
It wasn’t the first magazine I wrote for, but it was the first one that gave me a full-time job; still the first of only two full-time jobs I’ve had in journalism. When I joined I envisaged staying for a couple of years, but by the time I left I’d been there for seven and a half.
It was riding high back then. For a while we the UK’s biggest-selling computer magazine and both advertisers and kit suppliers were falling over themselves to get onto our pages.
Apparently not any more. When its shut-down was announced today it was still drawing in 54,009 readers every month so, as Chris of the Brennan intimated, clearly the ad sales were very poor or the rates were too low.
Or the readership figure was a bit out.
It’s a sad day, seeing it go like that, but I do feel it strayed a bit lately. Some very strange covers, a fair amount of re-used copy in between them, and an apparent fascination with certain subject matters, which came up more often than they probably should.
There might be some job losses so it’s nothing to celebrate, even if you do work for a rival publisher, but it’s something I think a fair few could see coming. That, though, doesn’t make it any less of a shame, or that it will be any less missed.
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Tags: pcw
Hi Nik – only just caught this, thanks for the kind words. It was the (lack of) ads as you suggest – readership was holding up pretty well. Ho hum, back to the freelance world for me for a while!
Kelvyn (ex-editor PCW)