Is Are Media flogging a dead Bauer horse?

At the eleventh-hour, a saviour has been found for Wheels, Motor, 4x4 Australia and WhichCar - one which is committing to print publishing. Are they prolonging the inevitable?

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After innumerable consultations with Dr Jack Kevorkian, formerly relevant Australian motoring titles Wheels, Motor and Which Car have been offered a last-ditch chance at Jesus-like resurrection. 

Are Media, (I think you’d agree) is already crying out for a re-brand (see above); if not me, then someone else was going to do it. Putting the ‘sole’ back into print. Are has appointed Andrew Beecher as new CEO. 

Irrelevance: They wonder why nobody buys this rag anymore.

Big, bad Beech is of course the dude who convinced Channel Nine that CarAdvice was worth sixty-something million bucks - despite coming with a profound case of Alborz, Tony and Paul, in a boxed set, temporarily. #Respect.

Wheels et. al. was of course part of Bauer Media’s mad experiment in how fast half a billion dollars can be disappeared, as if by magic. Beech apparently has the imprimatur to spin the motoring rags off and do what he wants with them - provided it makes money - but he is only ‘acting’ CEO - which sounds to me like, one hand on the parachute already, seemingly.

I’m so torn by this development. No more EQC Bullshit Cars of the Year. Very disappointing. I do find the children endlessly entertaining. Last year’s car of the year - the plug-in GLE, awarded to one of the group’s biggest enduring advertisers, was truly hilarious. It’s up there with a second term for Trump. And they were so upliftingly defensive about it. So there’s that.

But I also have a soft spot for the mastheads, having contributed extensively to both, back when I had hair and was attractive to women who needed not a Zimmer frame in order to get around.

Look, I think Beech is the only guy who can do the whole Jesus, wake up - it’s Easter Sunday’ thing with them. But the group makes most of its revenue from subscribers. Remember that? Subscribing to a paper publication? Shortly after the last T-rex bit the dust.

That’s a hurdle, because as subscribers shuffle off to the great car park in the sky, they simply won’t be replaced by 20- and 30-somethings. The only people in their 20s and 30s touching a paper magazine are just getting the loungeroom in order for their grandparents, who’ve dozed off listening to Ben Fordham...

Stormy seas ahead for the kids though, so that’s nice. Will Wheels survive? Can it hope to return from the brink of irrelevance? Let me know in the comments.

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