Bye Bye Freeze!

[Bluebird]

Craziness!


TransWorld Puts Freeze on Ice

SAM Magazine--Oceanside, Calif., Nov. 1, 2004--Freeze Magazine will cease publication with its January 2005 issue, TransWorld Media (TWM) vice president/general manager Brad McDonald told SAM.

In addition to the Freeze staff, TWM has cut loose director of marketing and business development Mike Jaquet and vice president of marketing and sales Allen Crolius.

McDonald said that Freeze was having difficulty hitting its circulation targets, in part because the magazine had a relatively narrow niche and little room to broaden its market without bumping up against larger stablemates Ski and Skiing Magazines.

[The Reverend Floater]

Craziness!


TransWorld Puts Freeze on Ice

SAM Magazine--Oceanside, Calif., Nov. 1, 2004--Freeze Magazine will cease publication with its January 2005 issue, TransWorld Media (TWM) vice president/general manager Brad McDonald told SAM.

In addition to the Freeze staff, TWM has cut loose director of marketing and business development Mike Jaquet and vice president of marketing and sales Allen Crolius.

McDonald said that Freeze was having difficulty hitting its circulation targets, in part because the magazine had a relatively narrow niche and little room to broaden its market without bumping up against larger stablemates Ski and Skiing Magazines.

Before the "ha ha's!", I gotta say this is a bummer. First of all, Freeze was definitely great for the younger market. It got teenybumbers excited about skiing, about the culture and about the whole scene. It gave our athletes more exposure and in turn, got them better contracts because of the equity it brought the ski companies through exposure to a market with a lot of spending money.

Second, knowing Jaquet and much of the Freeze crew, they really are a great group of dudes. Very generous, very professional despite the juvenile flavor of their magazine, and just truly stoked skiers. Knowing these guys, they'll all do very well at whatever they aim to do, but still--their baby is dead.

Alas...Viva la Powder!

[kush1]

WOW, looks like my friend greg won't be doing an internship there this spring......

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

wow...that sucks. I'm not really a fan of Freeze, but anytime the industry loses a mag it sucks. Sucks for their readership, sucks for the companies that targeted that readership, sucks for the writers and photogs 'cause there's one less place to sell their work.

Hopefully, the Freeze crew will band together and start something independent up.

But in the meantime, let's hope Powder sees the an increase in advertising 'cause of this

[shamrockpow]

Freeze was having difficulty hitting its circulation targets, in part because the magazine had a relatively narrow niche and little room to broaden its market without bumping up against larger stablemates Ski and Skiing Magazines.

Aaaargh! This is just such BS. Transworld is just concerned about advertising all those adult diapers and cialis in Ski, so they dump a youth oriented magazine?

Somebody should buy Freeze, get them a real designer/copy editor, and take a big old bite out of Ski/Skiing's market share

[davey]

That sucks, but they had it coming to them imo. I rarely read that magazine, sometimes in the supermarket but thats it, and I'm even in their little "niche" being 21 and owning twin tip skis I suppose..

[bossass]

Disappointing indeed, but not as disappointing as losing Axis. I'll take photography and content over brad holmes fart jokes any day.

Long live Powder!

[sandytheskier]

Too bad. I read that mag once and awhile..
Oh, wait..

21 and owning twin tip skis..

They were trying to help the skiing revolution.
Good ol' POWDER.

[KevinDineen]

Despite what anyone might think, this is a sad day in our office, too. All competition aside, Freeze complemented Powder fairly well. That magazine and their staff did a lot to rejuvinate the sport--did a lot to create young passionate skiers who we felt would grow up to become Powder readers. Of all the magazines owned by Time4, Freeze was the one that was healthiest for skiing; it's sad that it's the one that had to go. Besides, those guys are all friends; we don't get wasted with the guys from SKI very often.

[Free Range Lobster]

They could have atleast gotten real lifties in the mag.
There are some that are hot, regardless of being few and far between.

[basom]

Besides, those guys are all friends; we don't get wasted with the guys from SKI very often.

well if you start, you might get their asses sacked too.

J/K, i already miss gorilla steeze.

[phUnk]

I hearted Freeze for what it was, and will miss it.

[grizzle6]

I think Freeze was pretty obnoxious for the most part, but I still think it sucks that they're done. When it comes to ski porn--I think the more the merrier. Looks like Brad Holmes is gonna have even more free time on his hands.

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

Isn't, or wasn't, Freeze a major sponsor of the US Freeskiing Open? That would suck if the USFO is affected by this.


EDIT: Just checked www.usfreeskiingopen.com. Looks like they're not the title sponsor, but still a sponsor nonetheless. Less money going into these events sucks unless the slack is picked up from somewhere else.

[KevinDineen]

Isn't, or wasn't, Freeze a major sponsor of the US Freeskiing Open? That would suck if the USFO is affected by this.

The Open was entirely a Freeze property. Unless one of the event promotions companies picks up the ball, or SKIING takes it over, it's likely done.

[Tyrone Shoelaces]

The Open was entirely a Freeze property. Unless one of the event promotions companies picks up the ball, or SKIING takes it over, it's likely done.

^^^ that's not exactly the shizzle

[snorkeldeep]

i heard that there is talk of skiing getting the axe as well.. not really substantiated though. two mags in one year going away would suck .. especially as skiing seems to be doing better these days editorially.

[freshies]

Despite what anyone might think, this is a sad day in our office, too. All competition aside, Freeze complemented Powder fairly well. That magazine and their staff did a lot to rejuvinate the sport--did a lot to create young passionate skiers who we felt would grow up to become Powder readers. Of all the magazines owned by Time4, Freeze was the one that was healthiest for skiing; it's sad that it's the one that had to go. Besides, those guys are all friends; we don't get wasted with the guys from SKI very often.

Kevin, I would be interested in your take on my opion (seeing how you work @ Powder). I believe that there just is not a large enough overall segment of the population into skiing to support all these various mags. The "hard corps" (people like us that spend time on a skiing related site) will always read/buy Powder and Couloir. The general population of recreational skiers will buy Ski and Skiing. Between these 2 groups, there really isn't a larger market to target w/o taking readership away from these 4 mags...Face it, we are a niche group.

[Bluebird]

The problem stems from the difficulty in securing advertisement dollars from companies outside of the ski industry. When your readership is mainly 12-19 years olds getting ad money can be difficult.

[Greydon Clark]

Somebody should buy Freeze, get them a real designer/copy editor, and take a big old bite out of Ski/Skiing's market share

Yeah, Freeze was definitely rocking the cut-n-paste/Commodore 64 graphic style. The cluttered look might have worked in 1998, but, obviously, it doesn’t work for the kids in 2004. Sometimes Freeze was really interesting or funny, I really liked the articles by Benjamin Weisman, but often they seemed too “aware” of the “industry” and incredibly unaware of the importance of telling a good or interesting story. Also, their “edgy” style was a direct rip-off of Big Brother, which did it better with more style and balls.

Anyway, it sucks that Powder is now the only US ski magazine whose target market in hardcore skiers. (With the exception of Couloir and Backcountry.)

[AntiSoCalSkier]

I hope we don't see an influx of kids from their forums here.

Other than that, it's always disapointing to see a ski related business fail.

[cj001f]

The problem stems from the difficulty in securing advertisement dollars from companies outside of the ski industry. When your readership is mainly 12-19 years olds getting ad money can be difficult.

Tell that to surfing magazine.

[KevinDineen]

Kevin, I would be interested in your take on my opion (seeing how you work @ Powder). I believe that there just is not a large enough overall segment of the population into skiing to support all these various mags. The "hard corps" (people like us that spend time on a skiing related site) will always read/buy Powder and Colouir. The general population of recreational skiers will buy Shi and Skiing. Between these 2 groups, there really isn't a larger market to target w/o taking readership away from these 4 mags...Face it, we are a niche group.

It's more like what bluebird says. Out of industry advertisers (cars, liquor, etc), don't care about style, importance, soul, etc. They care about circ. Ski and Skiing have huge controlled circulations (close to a half million each--surfer, by contrast, is the #1 surf magazine and has a circ of about 170,000, about a third of SKI's). If you buy a ski pass or a lift ticket, you are likely buying ski or skiing as well. If you look at just ski companies, Powder probably sells more ads than anyone, but we can't get the non-indemics. Freeze's problem is that their parent company already owns the #1 and #2 ski magazines. What's the point of owning #4? Freeze had good circ, just not enough to please the Time4 bean counters.

Snorkle, there are major changes afoot at Skiing, but the magazine itself isn't closing.


I wonder how the kids at Newschoolers are taking this...

[midget]

Great, I was finally getting some love from those guys with my shots. Oh well. One of the other things that sucks big time about this is loosing the US Freeskiing Open. It was one event that gave new kids a shot at becoming a pro. Hopefully someone else picks up the event.....also hopefully the boys over at Freeze just start over, and stay independent. They didn't last that long under Time.

[Alkasquawlik]

Fuck mang, that fucking sucks. Freeze didn't agree with many of us here, but it represented better than any other mag, the youth and the jib movement. Jibbers in general just lost a lot of hope. Cause unless your working with a good senior photog (Powder) or attend a lot of apres-ski partys (Freeskier) you ain't getting any more shots.