In article , Alun Palmer
writes:

(Michael Black) wrote in
:

unkadean () writes:


As I recall, the former Mrs. Wayne got most everything from Byte, etc.

unk


But Wayne was out of Byte by the third issue, at a time when it did not
amount to much. He only lost the potential for when it did get big.

He then turned around and started Kilobaud, which was pretty good for
some years, and then launching the very successful magazine for the
Radio Shack computer, titled something like "TRS-80 Microcomputing",
and a number of other computer specific titles. It's those he sold to
IDG, which brought in quite a bit of money at the time. Ironically, by
the time he did sell them, they were past their peak because the
computer world had moved on. I can't remember the year of the sale,
but I thought it was just as a lot of computer magazines were folding,
because too many had entered the field.

And since your wording can be read two ways, it's worth throwing in
that Wayne was divoriced from Virginia Londner Green by the time Byte
had started up. They had broken up about 1967 or 68, and from an
editorial at the time, it seemed to be the indirect cause of his later
tax problems.

By the time Byte was started, he was married to his second wife, Lynn.

It was never clear why Byte was put under the name of is his ex-wife,
though years later he did say it had to do with the tax problems and
the problems with Bell over those telephone articles, so he put it
under someone else's name so it couldn't be grabbed. That still does
not explain why it was his ex-wife. Three issues into the magazine,
Wayne's name was gone from the masthead. Nothing was said at the time.
And it was amusing how childish it got, with no mention of Wayne or 73
for about ten years. Even when there was an article in Byte about
teletype machines, and the bibliography mentioned QST, CQ and Ham
Radio, 73 was significantly absent.

Michael VE2BVW

I used to enjoy reading 73. Nobody could ever agree 100% with Wayne Green,
but I liked to read his editorials.

I suppose all of us that didn't renew are to blame. Certainly the
combination of falling ham numbers and hard times haven't helped. Magazine
subscriptions have dropped right off the bottom of my list of financial
priorities, for instance.

Alun, ALL the independent periodicals survive almost entirely on
sales of advertising space. Those sales are what keeps them
afloat. When advertising sales drop, so does the income for a
magazine and eventually too low a drop forces cancellation.

The subscription fees everyone pays goes almost entirely to what
are called "fulfillment services," the mailers, the distributors, the
keepers of mailing lists. That's the way it is in independent
periodical publishing in North America.

If one could get an independent accounting of QST, they would
very likely find out that QST survives mainly on advertising sales.
Plus the fact that they have an absolute demographic base of the
entire ARRL membership (still at about 170 thousand, give or take).
Independent periodicals have to get independent audits to prove
their edition sales numbers, don't have the backing of a large
membership base. 73 survived for a very long time as an independent
and CQ is still hanging in there. Ham Radio Magazine was starting
to drop in ad sales before 1990...publisher Skip Tenney correctly
read the about-to-be red writing on the wall and sold out to CQ. HR
managed to survive for 22 years as a niche independent.

Advertising budgets for amateur radio equipment are dropping among
all of the leader manufacturers...and increasing for other products
they make targeted to other radio services. Yaesu, Kenwood, and
Icom all make radios for other radio services. Few hams are aware
of that since they don't know much about those other radio services;
few are interested since they seem content to stay in one little room
of radio activity.

Len Anderson
retired (from regular hours) electronic engineer person
former associate editor at Ham Radio magazine