The Booze Book Battle

David Chilton is of course right when he asserts that The LCBO and NSLC is unfair competition for the private sector's magazines.

The concern of the private publishing industry, should be directed in another way though.

It should look at why the LCBO and NSLC needed to look at doing their own magazine if the private magazines were in fact reaching the readers the private magazine say they had as readers. A magazine's advertising is only effective if it sends the right customers to the advertisers, motivated to buy. The advertiser then has the job of converting that motivation in to coins and paper in their tills. If the magazine publisher has the readers they say they do, then the latter will happen. If the latter happens then the advertiser will have no reason to publish their own magazine.

The in-store situation in the four Western provinces seems all sweetness and light in comparison, especially in Alberta where we solved the problem of a government owned retail liquor store system publishing their own magazine. We privatized the system so we can run the retail sector as the customer wants, and how the owner of the liquor store saw fit.

If that mean a magazine being put together, the industry got together with private printers and risked their own money.

The last time I heard, we have a wide range of wine selection from around the world. We are not forced to drink the mass produced bland beers from the big two previously Canadian, now American owned, breweries.

We can base our purchasing decision on either our own tastes or what we have seen advertised in our local media, be it a printed magazine, a newspaper ad or review, or even an electronic newsletter.

Maybe Chilton should advocate that the LCBO and NSLC be implored to use modern ways of promoting its wares, and not kill so many trees to show they are still rooted in the past.

I would think the effort needed here from the Canadian Magazine Publishers Association should be a call of the privatization of the LCBO and NSLC.

Maybe they are chicken to say what really needs to be done.

It would have been even better if Chilton took a real look at what is happening in Alberta with the retail liquor sector.

Alas I bet he doesn't even know it is privatized.

Alas it is not surprising.