I am now convinced that the root of the problem with most print publications is that they are owned by companies that really don't care, or understand enough, to try to do anything to solve the problems they have to address to remain viable business enterprises. 

Yesterday, Business Week, owned by McGraw-Hill, announced it was seeking a buyer.  The article in the Wall Street Journal points out how advertising revenue has fallen consistently for the past eight years, with 2009 shaping up to be a particularly disastrous year. "Like many news magazines, BusinessWeek has struggled as car companies and other big marketers have curtailed advertising. Weekly circulation of 936,000 has held steady from a decade ago, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, but advertising has declined for seven of the last eight years."

So it isn't as though Business Week did not see this coming. I think it is fair to assume that if the average person owned Business Week, they would have been concerned 8 years ago about the direction of the business and that would have meant trying to do something about it. But Business Week really did nothing. I know, they redesigned their pages and they are really pretty now. And I know that they probably did enormous campaigns to keep circulation at its 2000 level.

But when it comes down to what really matters, advertising revenue - they did nothing other than make more phone calls and ask people if they wanted to buy an ad.

The way you buy ads today from Business Week is the same way that you bought  them 30 years ago. You call up, you hope that you get the right salesperson on the phone because only the salesperson who handles your "territory" can give you prices and then you make your decision and then call back to place the order. Basically, they are the equivalent of travel agents in the age of Expedia, Travelocity and PriceLine. As a Business Week advertiser you are supposed to feel honored that they will take your ad. Forget about the fact that the same advertisers can use Google, Yahoo or MSN, place ads whenever they want and see real time data on response.

And that is really their mortal sin, Business Week has absolutely no regard for the success or failure of your ad. They want you (the advertiser) to believe that results are entirely your problem. As long as you get the creative to them on time and pay the bill, they are done with you, until the time comes for them to try to get you to spend more money.It doesn't have to be that way, just because ads appear in print.

I know this is self-serving - since this is exactly the problem that Mediabids.com solves. (We have been buying and selling print ad space using a marketplace system for more than 10 years.) But I am not even saying that Business Week had to use Mediabids and was stupid not to (ok, maybe I would like to say that). What is particularly troubling is that they didn't do anything. They made no effort to make ad buying easier and to show advertisers that ads in Business Week actually work.

If they could not continue to be successful doing, essentially, exactly what they had always done, they just didn't want to play anymore. Which is not how anyone who truly cares about the business they own, or work for, behaves.

No doubt business magazines have pressures today that did not exist 10 years ago. No doubt advertising is harder to come by. But is there really so little creativity in the ranks of people who run Business Week that they could not come up with any solutions to the real problems in the last 8 years? Maybe they would not have worked and they would have been in this situation anyway but if it were your business wouldn't you have tried something? Anything?