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December
1999
Bodybuilding
Publications I thought long and hard about writing this particular article, it's not something that will endear me to any of the powers that be within the sport. In fact, I sincerely doubt any of you who read this will finish with a good feeling about what I've written. However, it's time someone addresses the current state of affairs we are faced with in the bodybuilding world, a situation that quite frankly, makes me sick. I suppose as I grow older and become more jaded, it becomes increasingly more difficult to see the good in things. I've often been accused by many of being too negative, too pessimistic. However, I consider myself a realist, not a pessimist. As such, I often force myself to remove the rose-colored glasses that so many of us seem to view the world with and try and determine what's really going on. What's currently going on in the world of bodybuilding stinks. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people bitch and moan about our current crop of bodybuilding publications. I will be the first to admit I've done more than my fair share of whining and complaining about the lack of quality content in the bodybuilding magazines available today. Why doesn't anyone produce a quality magazine anymore? Why does every magazine end up whoring itself to some supplement company, or worse still, endlessly promoting its own line of supplements? Well, the answer is simple my friends. It's called survival. Let's look back on what started this whole situation. Who's to blame? I think if we're going to finger point, we can start with the man himself, Bill Phillips. Does everyone remember Muscle Media 2000 when it first came out? I was in college at the time, managing a Worlds Gym. We got this notice in the mail talking about Muscle Media 2000, a new publication that was going to revolutionize the world of bodybuilding magazines. I had purchased the Anabolic Reference Guide, and Bill Phillips was like some sort of mythical figure to me at the time. I figured that with his knowledge and my genetics, I was going places baby! Needless to say, I was pissing my pants to get copies of this magazine into our club. Now, we've got Muscle Media, the biggest fluff, homoerotic piece of shit available with the possible exception of Gym magazine. What the hell happened? When Phillips first started the magazine, he spent a ton of money on advertising and promotions. He was in bed with Met-RX at the time, back when Met-RX came in two separate containers that had to be mixed together. I remember all of the promotional materials that were sent to us in response to the magazines debut, free issues, shirts, flyers, etc. When you think about all of the clubs across the county that were targeted in a similar fashion, the amount of money that was spent must have been staggering. I don't know how much of this money came from Phillips, or how much was financed through Met-RX or other investors. However, someone laid out a tremendous amount of cash. Eventually the relationship with Met-RX ended, probably for the same reasons why Met-RX ended up with a lawsuit with Peak Training Journal. Phillips needed a new main source of advertising dollars and he turned to Experimental and Applied Sciences, a company he would eventually purchase and turn into one of the most successful supplement companies in the history of the business. So, your asking me what the hell this has to do with the topic at hand, right? Bear with me, impatient one. Bill Phillips started hyping EAS like we had never seen before with a supplement company. Prior to Bill Phillips and Muscle Media 2000, supplement companies simply received advertising space for the money they spent with various publications. Sure, Joe Weider had all of the pros talking about how they used his various Megabolic packs and various other snake oils, but you didn't see whole articles devoted to one companies supplements printed under the guise of bodybuilding journalism. Bill changed all that. Sure, Muscle Media 2000 retained its hardcore edge, but they were also writing a hell of a lot of articles about the miracles of Phosphagain. When Phillips bought out EAS, the magazine began its slow downward spiral. Muscle Media 2000 began to change dramatically with the advent of their physique transformation contest. Quite frankly, this was probably the single most effective marketing strategy ever utilized by a supplement company. I think even Phillips was amazed at the response this generated, and pretty soon EAS supplements were flying off the shelves. Similarly, I think Bill started to see that the earning potential of the supplement business far exceeded any amount of revenue he was ever going to make from Muscle Media 2000. I think as EAS took off, and Bill Phillips began to be recognized as a legitimate businessman and entrepreneur, he found himself faced with a social dilemma. Bodybuilding is hardly accepted by the mainstream, and I'm sure his continued coverage of steroids and some of the other darker aspects of the sport wasn't going over too well with his new circle of friends. Additionally, the direction the magazine would have taken probably would have alienated its original audience, even if he had tried to keep most of the hardcore content. Muscle Media 2000 became Muscle Media, a slick Men's Fitness style EAS catalog. A lot of people are puzzled by the decision Phillips made. I'm not. Once Bill made the decision to change his focus from the magazine to his supplement company, he had no choice but to change the content. Bill wisely decided to market EAS supplements as mainstream products to the businessman or woman who wanted to get into shape. Look at the people he chose as his Physique Transformation winners. Normal, everyday people who made some pretty remarkable changes in their bodies (with EAS supplements of course). Why was this a wise decision? Well, of the myriad of various groups within the bodybuilding community, the one he chose has the most disposable income and is the most likely to believe his add copy. These people don't want to read about steroids, these are the people who read the Maxim article about intravenous steroid use and believe every word. Now, every bodybuilding magazine in the world seems to be reading from the Bill Phillips Manual of Marketing. As much as this man is seemingly vilified in the sport, everyone is following in his footsteps. Name me a magazine that doesn't have a physique transformation contest. Name a magazine that doesn't endlessly promote supplements, not just with ads, but with article after article extolling the virtues of this company or this particular product. All of the printed magazines available today have a financial arrangement with one or more supplement companies that makes it impossible for them to cover the sport in an unbiased and truthful fashion. So, I guess the question of the moment is, why doesn't someone come along and produce a new hardcore bodybuilding magazine that fills this huge niche? I don't know if it's still possible to produce such a magazine and have it be economically viable. You see, supplement companies don't particularly like advertising in magazines that tell the truth about bodybuilding. Why is this? Bodybuilding, at least the kind of bodybuilding that sells magazines, is a drug sport. Competition bodybuilders take enormous amounts of drugs to achieve the kind of look necessary to win contests. Supplement companies would like to have us believe that the look achieved by these athletes is largely due to their products, not a result of years of anabolic steroid abuse and constant overfeeding. The realities of bodybuilding do not support the bullshit hype and promotion endorsed by the supplement industry. We are now faced with a situation where supplement companies get more for their advertising dollars than just ad copy. They now exert control over content. This is kind of like letting the inmates run the asylum, so to speak. These magazines would like us to believe they are the Newsweek or Time of the bodybuilding world, bringing us the news and information on the sport in a pure, unbiased fashion. Can you imagine what Time or Newsweek would be like if they had similar policy with advertisers? I can just see the covers now: "This Week: Our Continued Coverage of the Amazing Products Produced by Microsoft." Wow. What outstanding journalism. What amazes me about our current situation is that we continue to buy this crap. I'm guilty of this just as much as anyone else. Why? I don't have any other options. Bodybuilding is a visual sport. I like looking at pictures of bodybuilders, it gives me motivation and fires me up for my next tough workout. And hey, I like looking at picture of fitness competitors and T&A girls as much as the next guy. However, I really can't remember the last time I actually read an article. I buy these magazines, usually Flex and MuscleMag, on a monthly basis. I look through the pictures, read some of the captions and gossip columns, and that's about it. It's almost like I'm wading through the bullshit in order to look at some inspirational photos and get the latest dirt. Today's bodybuilding magazines aren't like Newsweek and Time, they're more like the National Enquirer with more ads. The very best information in bodybuilding today is found on the Internet. Webzines like Mesomorphosis and Anabolic Extreme offer the one thing that printed publications do not: THE TRUTH! However, the limitations of the Internet currently make it impossible for webzines to compete successfully with printed magazines. Low bandwidth prohibits pictures from being downloaded with rapid speed and many bodybuilders lack the ability to even access the Internet in the first place. As many of you may know, it has always been my intention to take Anabolic Extreme to print. One of my intentions in writing this article was to get some feedback from the readers. Often times the challenges involved in producing the print version of AE seem insurmountable. If you have any insight into this situation, I'd love to hear from you. Please contact me at jason@anabolicextreme.com with your thoughts, comments, and input on this article. Copyright 1999 Jason Meuller and Anabolic Extreme. This material may not be copied, reproduced, or transmitted without the express written permission of the copyright owners. |
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