Plastic Model Mojo
Plastic Model Mojo, a podcast dedicated to scale modeling, as well as the news and events around the hobby
Plastic Model Mojo
Shaping the Future of Fine Scale Modeler: Insights and Innovations
Have you ever wondered how a beloved hobby magazine can evolve and thrive in today's digital age? Join us as we explore the fascinating history and future prospects of Fine Scale Modeler magazine. Featuring insights gathered from Aaron Skinner and Tim Kidwell at the IPMS National Convention and an A Scale Model Podcast's exclusive vision-sharing session with Firecrown Media's CEO, Craig Fuller, we revisit the magazine's journey from its 1980s roots under Kalmbach Publishing up to its current direction. We'll reflect on the magazine's early days dedicated to skill development and how it adapted through changing revenue streams, all while expressing our passion for a return to detailed, skill-based builds.
Inspired by high-end European publications, we brainstorm innovative ways to enhance Fine Scale Modeler's quality. Imagine longer, more in-depth articles, comprehensive product comparisons, and reviews that elevate the magazine's value. We discuss the importance of maintaining affordable pricing to attract casual readers while leveraging digital content to guide them to new online resources. As lifelong fans, we believe in the need for a strong American modeling publication and encourage listeners to share their ideas for improvement, which we will discuss further in future episodes. Join us in this compelling discussion and be part of shaping the future of Fine Scale Modeler.
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Well, dave, we got another little short here for folks, kind of a standalone topic. Folks who are at the IPMS National Convention may have taken in Aaron Skinner and Tim Kidwell's presentation or seminar about X number of years in the publishing business. It was about fine scale and where it was going and all those details. And then the new owner, firecrown Media. Their CEO was a guest on our Friends Up in Canada scale model podcast and they interviewed him. He had some things to say about the future direction of the magazine. And then folks who are still readers the September-October issue of this year. Craig Fuller had a one-page spread in there from a note from Firecrown Media's CEO. This feature concluded with saying that he would love to hear our thoughts and ideas on improving the fine scale modeler experience. And then he puts his X or Twitter handle on here for a reply comment. So we thought we might talk about this a little bit and link him up to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. For the listeners who don't know, fine Scale, owned by Calm Back Publishing, was one of a stable of magazines, a what you might dub special interest magazine. They've got Flying Magazine Yachting, just a whole stable. So they've already got some experience in these specialty special interest magazines titles and new owner obviously purchased them, thinking that we can do something different to make more money. And Fine Scale is one of the titles that's well known in the comeback publishing stable and it's interesting to hear some of the things that they say and some of the things that they acknowledge.
Speaker 2:If a listener has not already watched it on YouTube, fine Scale actually published a video of the seminar that was done at the Nationals and if you haven't watched it, I urge you to watch it because it's a really interesting not only trip back through what has been but also some of the things they've encountered along the way and some of the reactions that they've gotten from some of their readers. And you know, mike and I, like any two modelers sitting around, sometimes sipping an adult beverage, we've got opinions about some of the things that we think Fine Scale could do. Mike and I were both Fine Scale subscribers for years. I think we both fell in love with the magazine when it first came out in 1982. So you know, we just thought we'd talk about a few of those things.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's key, the date range you give. There you were on board from, I guess, the inception and I came on a little bit later, not much, yeah, in fact I have one of my first issues still issues still. I've got another one I kept. That's from 1993 and and it's interesting because I think these are from the bob hayden era who was editor for a long time. I mean, these are magazines.
Speaker 1:The two I'm holding are more than 10 years apart, so so he was there a long time and he came from a model railroading background and I won't tell the complete story. But in short, there are a lot of skills and things that were in that realm at that time, like probably in the late 70s and early 80s, around that time frame. They are being used in model railroading and you know, there was a need, I guess, or a curiosity, even if these things would port over and be a skill share over to the static scale modeling hobby and kind of irrespective of genre, because fine skill has always been covering a lot of bases, even back in the 80s.
Speaker 2:Right. Remember the premier issue back in the fall of 82 had a scratch-built vignette with two scratch-built or heavily modified figures. So I mean they from the outset were all genre as far as what the magazine contained.
Speaker 1:So in this 10-year span, I I have a couple of issues I still have on hand. The magazine really didn't change much and to thumb through these, what you're going to see is, you know, they're both pre-internet, so they are just chock full advertising.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Which you know was an enjoyable feature back then, because that's kind of the way you had to keep your finger on the pulse of things, is there? There was no internet.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that's how you found out what was coming out to help you along.
Speaker 1:So and I guess for me personally, you can kind of tell you're part of it. The thing that I always loved about the magazine in that era was that it was such a skills developing kind of thing, and it didn't matter what the subject matter was. There were a lot of takeaways. Whether it was a Formula One car or vacuforming canopies or some figure conversion build or what have you, there were a lot of things in there that were kind of agnostic to the actual subject matter, Right.
Speaker 1:So one thing that's been talked about by the current team at FineScale and then their new owner, CEO Craig Fuller, and his appearance, is that that's kind of here to stay, this cross-genre kind of approach. But of late the advertising in the magazine is way, way down. In fact, Mr Fuller stated on the Scale Model podcast, unless I heard it incorrectly, that it's not even their major revenue stream for the magazine. It's still paid subscribers. It is paid subscribers Now. In the past I don't know if that was true. Yeah, that's interesting detail now. And plus, we have the internet now, so there's folks aren't doing it that way anymore.
Speaker 2:Well, you mentioned the builds and what you could take from the articles, even if it wasn't something that you would build. I mean, you know, formula One car or whatever and that is one of the things that Fine Scale has gotten away from. That I would love to see them get back to, which is, yeah, it doesn't matter if I'm ever going to build item xyz, but to see a really skilled modeler build item xyz and I'm not talking an out of the box build or, uh, you know, here it is with all of the aftermarket that's available. But fine scale used to be known for those features where to be featured on the cover and it would be the center part of to be modified or scratch built or whatever.
Speaker 2:And just reading the article again, whether it was something that I was ever interested in building, I would always learn about a new product, a new technique, a new medium. It's kind of like you know how we joke about it. You know, every time we talk to Dr Strangebrush, you sit there, you make a note because he has some insight about a product or whatever that I'd never heard before or want to check out or whatever. And those were some of the best articles out of FineScale and I think they've kind of gotten away from them and I would love to see them get back to them Now. I think that's going to require them to probably put a lot more well I was going to say put a lot more effort into finding authors to do that type of stuff, but then again, I think their job might have also been made easier just because of the availability of what's out on the internet, finding talented people who are posting quality content now and mining them and getting them to write for a wider audience, an FSM audience, a wider hard copy audience.
Speaker 1:Well, both Craig Fuller and Aaron and Tim both talked about the expansion of the digital side of things and it's kind of interesting. I think in the Craig Fuller segment on Scale Model Podcast it was a lot about the deficiencies of the current website and the freshness of the content and all those sorts of things. And it's all true, all true. A, it's all true, all true. A good place to start. But but man, there is so much out there already to I don't know what you have to do to garner attention, because there's some really fabulous, phenomenal stuff being done out on the internet that can be viewed for free and the by.
Speaker 1:By contrast, a lot of the features in the current incarnation of the magazine tend to. I think in my opinion they kind of skew from intermediate toward basic that side of the curve and also, in my opinion, I think some of their content gets a little repetitive year on year as far as some basic tenets of scale modeling and techniques and skills. Not that those aren't important, but these older articles that we refer to a lot of times, it wasn't the buried nugget in there was not necessarily the headliner for the article. The headliner might be and I keep coming back to this Formula One because it's one of the older Paul Budzik articles or his conversions backdating in the monogram B-17, right.
Speaker 2:Yep, both great articles.
Speaker 1:There's lots of gold in there, and I think that both those articles are available on his website. But you know, it wasn't the nuggets weren't again, they weren't the headliner, they were buried in this subject-driven article. Right when you're going to skew toward technique, I think that you got to be careful there, because there's a lot of that out there again for free and I don't know if there's a lot of wow factor there. I know I got a lot of inspiration from the early incarnations of Fine Scale Modeler and for me, and maybe for you too's, that's gonna be a hard thing to get back to. But it it makes me wonder about something tim kidwell said in the in the national presentation was about folks outgrowing fine skill.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now I think in the original incarnation that that'd been hard for me to do, yes, but and I'm he's gonna sound like I'm tooting my own horn here, but for a lot of the content in the current incarnation I think that's true. And then he made the statement then be the person who writes those, those articles that that push it up or push it further. That's not exactly what he said, but that's kind of the spirit of what he said. And you know personally, we got a podcast to kick out, so so I don't have any articles I'm going to be writing and then I think it's the onus is on them a little bit to seek out authors and content as well.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what I was going to say. They're going to have to work a little harder to mine for content. I mean, I remember fine scale at the IPMS Nationals every year. You would never fail to see an editor or assistant editor or whatever. They were looking for models that wowed and then they were seeking out those people, people. I'll give you the one example that's the one that pops out most to me. One year at the IPMS Nationals somebody built a YB-17, one of the first 13 B-17s produced took the early mini craft kit backdated. It had just this unbelievable bare metal finish because those first 13 aircraft were finished spectacularly and polished highly. It was one of the best articles I can remember in fine scale and I know that they went and sought out the guy who built that and basically got him to write that article for them. I do think that they're going to have to work a little more to mine those sources, whether it be something that wows you at an AMPS National or an IPMS National or Scale Model Challenge, or even something on the internet, somebody who has a really interesting channel or a really interesting particular build.
Speaker 2:And something I wanted to mention. I agree with you and I agree with them that the digital needs updating. The digital was ignored. The digital could use a refresh. But I'm like you, I don't think they can compete in digital with everything that's out there.
Speaker 2:But our friend Rock Roszak, his story, I think, is instructive for FineScale, which is that when they relaunched Detail and Scale they initially relaunched it as digital only. And Rock thought everybody's going to want digital because you know there's so much more you can do with it. You can blow the pictures up. You know it has so many more you can do with it. You can blow the pictures up. It has so many more aspects to it. But he quickly found people coming to him wanting hard copy, because there is still something about a hard copy magazine or hard copy book, copy magazine or hard copy book and there are a significant portion of people who still want that tactile, physical product. While digital may be important, I think there is still fine scales home. The place where it can really shine is still in the physical realm rather than the digital realm.
Speaker 1:Again, going back to the scale model podcast segment, craig had mentioned a desire to up the quality of the printed magazine. He's talked about more like coffee table magazines and that's interesting because if you look at some of the higher end European magazines, that's kind of where they're playing. So they might be wise to go look at some of those publications and figure out what kind of content they're covering. And, speaking of those magazines, it's also interesting that there's so many magazines that are in play in Europe at any given time.
Speaker 2:There are so many magazines that are in play in.
Speaker 1:Europe at any given time. It'd be interesting to understand what's going on there. Given the population base between here and there, you would think there'd be a bigger market, because they've got the internet too. They've got all the same challenges that FineScale has, but there's just always five or six in play over there at any given time. And you know you look at Dave Parker's publications air and AFV modeler. They've been around a long time at this point, I mean yeah 20 years or more.
Speaker 1:And you know, an article that comes to mind was just in the recent IPMS journal, and it was Nestor Ferrer's Ferrari that we've seen. We've seen at least one show, one national.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was on display in the vendor room at this national. That's right.
Speaker 1:Because I think one was the best auto last year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's either San Marcos or Omaha.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it was at Omaha, but you know the paint finish and markings on that car.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:It's gorgeous and you know, for articles like that in fine scale, give them the five-page spread if you can. You know a lot of their articles get honed down a little bit and I think there's something lost there. Now this latest issue has got some pretty good lengthy Phantom articles in it. There's something lost there Now. This latest issue has got some pretty good lengthy Phantom articles in it. So it's not always the case, but sometimes some of those articles can get pretty short when I think they may have could have had a little more meat to them, and that's probably not their fault all the time, if even any of the time. You got to work with what you got and make the best of it. What else, man?
Speaker 2:One of the other things I would love to see is product comparisons. You and I are always commenting slash, joking, slash poking fun at the slew of products that are getting released either a new paint line or dry brushing brushes. Those are some of the brass toothpicks, those are some of the more ridiculous. But everybody's coming out with a super glue, everybody's coming out with, or many people are coming out with photo etch prep or whatever the product is from one of these many, many model product manufacturers Ammo, ak, vms, whoever.
Speaker 2:It would be really nice and would be an area that I think would be of interest for fine scalecommission articles where they take okay, here are the PVA glues available to the modeler and we run them through these tests that I don't think you're going to find. Well, obviously, no house organ is going to do it. It's not done on a lot of YouTube channels because it takes a little time and it takes some effort and there's a minor expense depending on what you're testing. I think that would be a service. Their features, we put them through their paces. Here's 20 brushes paint brushes, detail paint brushes and we test them out and here's what we find. I think more of those articles would be something that would stimulate interest in the magazine again.
Speaker 1:Well, I for one wish we had a domestic one that wasn't $15 a copy.
Speaker 2:Yes, given that they are already a big publisher, in theory they should be able to control costs somewhat, just simply from economies of scale. But yes, that is, I am much more likely to walk into the hobby shop. I am much more likely to walk into the hobby shop and pick up an issue of fine scale at $8.99 or whatever price they can get it down to, using the economies of scale of the larger publishing house, especially if it's got a great eye-catching cover article. Or you thumb through it and you see a couple of things that you'd like to read. Because that was the way it used to be in the old days. I'll be honest with you.
Speaker 2:I never really had a subscription to Fine Scale. I always picked it up in the hobby shop every month and it used to be that I wouldn't ever skip a month. I always would go in. The latest issue would be in there. I'd thumb through it and never in my mind did I go. Eh, not, no, because there was always, you know, a Paul Budzig article. Or again, in the old days you used to buy it and look at the advertisements, because that's how you found out what was new and all of that that's gone. And yes, I acknowledge we're not getting that back, but there are still ways to make the magazine something that is a compelling buy, especially at that price, as opposed to Air Modeler, which is what 15, 18 bucks now at the hobby shop.
Speaker 1:Something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and one final thing that I wanted to mention that I think they could do, and that is that, yeah, they can't compete with digital, but there is a ton of stuff out there. There are a ton of YouTube channels, a ton of websites, a ton of digital content that, no matter how many hours you and I spend in front of a computer, we're probably not going to find just simply because you've got to stumble across it to find it. And I do think that FineScale could leverage the digital aspect that they're competing with by featuring interesting, different, new, compelling digital content and pointing people to that content. Now, yes, you're pointing them to something that, ultimately, is going to compete with you, but if you have that compelling digital content noted in your magazine every month, people are going to come back to look for it, just like they used to come back and look for the what's new ads.
Speaker 1:Well, folks, that's our two cents today. It could change. Might get up to a nickel.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's a longstanding publication. We want to see it succeed. Absolutely Even if it doesn't curate to our own particular desires. I think there's ways to improvement.
Speaker 2:I do think that both you and I I mean we want to see Fine Scale succeed. We both have fond memories of it from back at the beginnings of our modeling journey. There is I am convinced there is a place for a good American modeling magazine.
Speaker 1:So, folks, if you've got some ideas you'd like to see FineSkill implement, of course, send them to FineSkillModeler, and if you've got the latest issue, you can tweet them right to the CEO. He'd be interested in hearing them, and we'd like to hear them, too, via listener mail so we can talk about them more if somebody sends in suggestions through us. Yep, via listener mail, so we can talk about them more if somebody sends in suggestions through us, yeah,
