Vehicle Electronics Professional Closes
For a great many years, there has been a trade magazine for the ICE industry. For a long time it was called Car Audio Retailer. Then, as times changed, the title was changed to Mobile Electronics News. I would write columns, do product reviews, file show reports, compile people profiles, and try to make sense of the awards they ran – all sorts, in different eras. I was once even offered the editorship but was unable to take it on with my other commitments.
Then the title was sold to another company, very eminent in trade publications for the financial community. High level business stuff. I was ‘˜New Broomed’. This is when an established contributor or editor is swept aside in new changes brought in by a new owner or editor. It is what saw me make the move from Max Power to Fast Car, way back when and was down to a new editor. One destined not to edit the title as long as I had been there (which was four years) and whose by line I have not seen in over a decade.
VEP ran an awards event and hired the blonde broadcaster from The Gadget Show and even invited me to go to the ‘˜do’, so I got to meet her and sit on the same table, which was sweet. She’s a star.. But Parrot got NINE awards. Even got the digital radio unit of the year for a unit that was not a digital radio but could receive stuff over the net. Not the same.
On Tuesday the 3rd, the mails were sent out to inform the potential participants that the Expo was not going to be run, but not that the magazine’s June issue would not be published, as we gather is now the case.
VEP had got awfully skinny in the last issues and it has to be said, the management decision to rename the magazine as Vehicle Electronics Professional and openly reject the old guard and state that audio was over as far as business was concerned and that they would rather concentrate upon telematics and fleet navigation and the like, seemed a bit, well, silly to this writer. Especially as it’s what I do!
I do know it alienated the hell outta me personally, as I personified all the ‘˜Old Guard’ they had been so rude about and I am certain it was direction from above, rather than anything personal by the editor, who is a consummate professional, able to do far wider work than I can. It’s just a shame it happened.
Talking to senior figures in the industry, I know that one top end Japanese outfit was planning on launching their new wares at the Expo, so is deeply ticked off that it has gone. Quite apart from feeling that the trade needs a magazine. Talking to another, it was clear that they were keen to support the title but found their approach ‘puzzling’. One more senior figure at a third major Japanese outfit said, ‘The industry is crying out for a trade magazine but it was not well received in the dealers.’
Wanting to check them all out, I kept calling. ‘It is a shame, but to be honest, the awards evening did upset me… we were even left out of the listing as a manufacturer. It is a shame, we still do need something like it. We were ready to join in.’
Finally, I called the publishers to see if they wanted to comment. I was invited to e-mail them..