The End:
The October 2025 issue of SA Flyer will be the last.
In Guy’s column this month he explains:
And so it ends. SA Flyer has been killed by not one, but two, fatal wounds.
First, by the idiocy of the SACAA, which has forgotten that it is not just supposed to make the industry safer, but actually develop it.
Second, the magazine industry has been killed by the ‘interweb’. There is a vast sucking sound made by our advertising revenue as it disappears down the tube of Google and social media, with its memes and 2-second info-bites.
Without sufficient advertising revenue it’s no longer possible to print the magazine. Over the past year we tried hard to get back into print, aiming to at least print every third issue. But not only were the costs prohibitive, we no longer have distribution channels. Ten years ago, SA Flyer was sold through almost 1,000 shops – and postal deliveries worked, so we could mail it to over a thousand subscribers, both locally and around the world.
Without print we tried hard to make it digitally accessible, using extra-large fonts and shorter stories. But people don’t like reading magazines on mobile devices. Our readership declined, despite our efforts to maintain the quality we have been renowned for. Like typewriters and 35mm film, magazines have had their day.
So the best thing we can do is not to prolong the dying throes, but to bow out as gracefully as we can.
(Continued in my column in the magazine…)
