National Geographic Channel was a Fox (Murdoch) property that licensed the trademark of the National Geographic society. Eventually National Geographic magazine editors pushed back on the UFO stuff on Channel (speculation here) and got it removed (presumably at threat of ending the trademark deal).
So then Murdoch bought the magazine.
On the plus side, Dogs With Jobs is a great show and that’s likely to continue.
Which issue should be considered the last one?
National Geographic Society is a nonprofit that is also running a magazine, which like most magazines was losing money and needed to close. They sold instead, presumably funding NGS activities for a couple decades into the future. Hard choice either way.
I’m not so cynical. I think the people running the different parts of National Geographic all care about it deeply, but that isn’t enough. It had a great run, but I think it’s time has passed. The economics for making a print magazine like NG just don’t work anymore.
In the pre-web days, I used to subscribe to lots of magazines, now I just get one that I don’t even want. For some reason, I started getting Popular Science sent to me out of the blue last year. How that magazine survives I don’t understand because it’s pretty bad.
I was at the store last weekend and saw Nat Geo on the stand at the check-out. I don’t know if it was the monthly or a special edition i.e. cash grab from impulse buyers, but the big headline on the front was something like “The Supernatural: Is It Real?”. No lie. I consider the last issue to be whatever one came before that one.
It’s likely to be filled with more ads too. I don’t even trust the photography anymore, I certainly see them going cheap and being heavily dependent on photoshop instead of paying for skilled photographers.
Just like I could be embalmed alive by the Disney Animatronics people to “survive” as a grotesque parody of myself? Gee… how tempting that sounds.
I hope so. That’s a good chunk of senior people looking for jobs and the media landscape is pretty fucked right now.
Did you forget that the Smithsonian is in the pocket of the Koch brothers? (I would have preferred to forget that too.)
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/23/3637313/smithsonian-climate-change-koch/
Murdoch thinks he can buy respectability for his self-serving anti-science views by framing them under the National Geographic banner, except by ruining the image of National Geographic it will be one step forward and two steps back. Plus it could be a money-losing proposition for him in the long run, since the typical Nat Geo reader isn’t going stick around when the quality of the science goes south, and it’s not like the science-denying crowd is suddenly going to be interested in National Geographic.
I did not know that. Now I feel sick.
I propose International Geographic.
Nationalism is so passé. How about Autonomous Geographic?
Rob’s photoshop for the announcement of this was so much more subtle. http://boingboing.net/2015/09/09/national-geographic-sold-to-ru.html
Sheeeeit, NG fell from grace already anyway. I know mags need ads or whatever, but we cancelled our subscription in '14 for proliferation of editorializing ads and lack of content. Whether it is true or not, 17 page ads for large chemical companies make you seem like industry’s water boy, and does not count as content, which it was replacing.
I fairly well knew we’d be cancelling soon when they did away with their version of Letters to the Editor, can’t remember exactly when that.
Brother, you don’t even know the half of it.
Holy Jeebus fuckstain…that image deserves a trigger warning. Damn near lost my coffee on sight of that monstrosity.
…and I just called and cancelled my subscription.
Even though this means nothing, I still feel better.
Maybe when he starts adding “Page 3 Girls” to National Geographic he can also rename it “National Pornographic.”
