Thursday, March 13, 2008 – Bluegrass Now magazine, one of the leading bluegrass magazines, announced Thursday it will change from print format to an e-zine, available only on line, after its April issue. The magazine started in 1990.
Publisher Wayne Bledsoe said Bluegrass Now said, "It was a hard decision to make. We've worked on this literally for two years. I've had (talks with) a group of publishers for the past two years literally from coast to coast. They're experiencing many of the same kind of concerns that I was."
"The advertising is down across the country," he said. "We reached the point over a year ago, our on line subscribers had passed our print subscribers."
He said the original intent of the on-line site was for foreign subscribers, who did not want to pay the extra cost of shipping the magazine to them.
Bledsoe said the peak number of subscribers was 30,000 about 5 or 6 years ago. Since then, the magazine decreased to about 8,000 subscribers.
"I don't know how much the economy had to do with it," he said.
He said the advertising was down with some long-time advertisers eventually either dropped out completely or curtailed their frequency of advertising.
He estimated that the web site has about 8,000 subscribers on-line.
"We decided to let's go for it and make it multi-media," he said.
"Although this decision was initially quite difficult for a retired
academic who has lived by the printed word for more than half a century,
I am truly excited about being in the vanguard of multimedia publishing
in the bluegrass community," Bledsoe wrote.
Bledsoe said the site could contain features, reviews, charts and columns along with audio and video clips.
The magazine is based in Rolla, Mo.
The decision by Bledsoe leaves Bluegrass Unlimited as the leading print magazine in the bluegrass music field.
