The Alternative Angler – Where Next?

Never mind smelling the flowers, don’t forget to take time out to see the satirical side of fishing life and grab a laugh along the way as well. So here’s a regular column from Kevin Perkins to remind us that life is for laughing at, or taking the p*** out of, whenever we can.

Onwards, Upwards…….. And then where?

June 16th, still an evocative date in the fishing calendar, and a time to look forward to another season on the rivers, and perhaps time to look forward in other areas……

Great news recently that FM membership has topped the 25,000 mark, and all credit to Graham and his colleagues for the remarkable work that they do in making sure the site goes from strength to strength and in maintaining its No.1 position. As Ron Clay says, here’s to the next 25,000 members (are we ‘FishingMagic-ers’, perhaps ‘FishingMagicians’, who knows). Onwards and upwards, maybe we can extrapolate the current 25000 members to 50000 in five years time, And yet….

Should we pause to consider just what the future holds? FM will, of course, continue to get bigger and better, but what about the opposition? My own feeling is that it may well come from the angling weeklies. Any future downturn in sales may well persuade them to move from paper to electronic journalism; much in the same way that hot metal finally succumbed to desktop publishing.

They could begin by running both systems in parallel, continuing with the papers but perhaps offering an (upgraded from the current efforts) Angling Times or Angler’s Mail ‘Lite’ version on the net, containing the editorial content of the paper but with a different set of sponsors/advertisers, with on-line links to both. This would probably be available by monthly or annual subscription, instead of shelling out £ 70 a year on each weekly, how about an annual £ 20 senior £ 10 junior subscription, with the added bonus that as a member of the AT ‘club’ your membership would include loyalty discounts and special offers sent to you by a personalised email, of course.

Bearing in mind that more and more people are using the Internet, particularly youngsters, do you think you would rather visit a site that has features by the likes of Bob Nudd, Matt Hayes, Martin Bowler, Keith Arthur, John Wilson, Des Taylor et al, perhaps offering some kind of email/forum facility allowing you to pose questions to these angling legends, (whether those ‘stars’ actually answered the queries may be another issue)?

How about birthday messages for juniors, chances to enter competitions to win a day’s fishing with one of the above named angling superstars. Given that sort of high profile, would those youngsters continue to visit a site such as FM? Some might chose one or the other, some might frequent both (or all three if AM gets in on the act too). But either way it would surely dilute the overall Internet angling ‘readership’ given that there would possibly even more sites to visit.

But is it just idle speculation to consider that these (currently imaginary) alternative sites would be viewed as being far more high profile, and maybe even seen as being authoritative on all matters piscatorial. Would they therefore take members away from FM, which from the outside may seem to offer less. Whilst the current situation is that internet sites and the angling press are possibly complementary and offer different things to different people, what happens if they are suddenly all competing for the same audience?

Which way would FM go then, and what price loyalty? We like to somewhat grandly call ourselves ‘members’ but in truth, we have shown no more commitment to this site other than to log on and supply a few basic details, no real attachment there, then. No matter, in return for giving those brief details we expect this site (and not forgetting that there are others, by the way) to be there for us, day in, day out, providing instant coverage of breaking stories, giving us opportunities to make comments, ask for and get meaningful advice, read diverse, well written articles, and perhaps to have that sense of ‘belonging’ that you certainly don’t get from reading any angling paper or magazine. Maybe some of you have formed friendships, attended fish-ins or other events and all for the knock down membership price of…….nothing!

It may well just be me being a tad pessimistic, but the weeklies already have the editorial content, which would, of course mean negligible costs to find items to fill a web based site and they will certainly have the pull to attract advertisers. If they could tempt say a couple of thousand ‘internet’ anglers to sign up, do you think that a ‘free’ FM will remain as attractive a proposition to a newcomer to fishing sites, and perhaps of far more importance, is if the see-saw of membership numbers and visitors to the site tips away from FM, will the advertisers and sponsors respond by taking their custom and support elsewhere?

I don’t want to sound like the harbinger of doom, and I probably think too much (well, maybe not!) and perhaps we should all enjoy what we have at the moment, but whilst FM is currently the biggest and best fishing site around at the moment, if the angling press does start to muscle in, will that remain the case for very long?