Today has been pretty typical for a Friday, except for two press releases. What makes this very unusual - like lightning striking twice - is that two major publishers that both have stakes in the semiconductor media industry have made announcements. It's quite rare for that to happen at all but both on the same day, and a Friday—amazing!

The most important, in my opinion, is the news that trade organization SEMI has sold its monthly mag, Semiconductor Manufacturing Magazine (SMM) to Reed Business Information (RBI), home of monthly trade mag favorite (my preference on monthlies) Semiconductor International (SI). A Chinese language version wasn't mentioned, so I assume SEMI keeps that?

Not surprisingly (rumours have been around for months), RBI has acquired the rights to the publication and immediately stopped publishing it! SEMI will now get preferential attention and I assume marketing pages and coverage with SI, as part of the deal—if you read between the lines of the press release!

Buying a rival and then closing it down is nothing new in most business circles and in this case, there are some very good reasons for doing it. Firstly, SEMI had shot one big hole in its foot a few years ago when it decided to compete with the independent media (including us), with the launch of SMM. They lost a lot of good will and free publicity, as well as a lot of money on the project (rumour says). In recent years, SEMI has come under heavy criticism from member companies over the large number of trade shows and the costs involved. Yet they were splashing money on a new magazine rumoured to be $1 million a year (early years) to compete for advertising dollars with the established media!

One of the basic issues that persisted since its launch was that the semiconductor industry didn't need another monthly magazine—not least one that didn't do anything better than what was out there! They did figure that one out and shifted focus by trying to cover more chip manufacturing issues (what we do!), but that didn't work because they didn't have real compelling content. They didn't stand out and didn't do anything anyone wasn't already doing. In fact, it just ended up being another thin monthly mag with little or no differentiation.

Anyone will tell you that, in a highly competitive industry, such as the semiconductor industry and/or in the semiconductor publishing industry, basic mistakes will get you nowhere!

RBI have also done every publisher a favour in buying/dumping SMM. One of the reasons concerns advertising rates. SEMI was struggling with SMM and according to our sales manager, had been offering very cheap deals just to keep going. Monthly mags such as SST and SI were perhaps being affected by this more than they let on because it is rare for publishers to buy/dump, and I don't think it has ever happened before in this sector?

Moving on...

I loved the two quotes in the release as they made me laugh! Stan the man at SEMI said:

"To complement our overall communication strategy and fulfill our association mission, SEMI needs a strong publication. However, we do not need to own it."

Oh so right! Trouble is, that was true years ago, but SEMI simply wanted to make money and didn't realize that until now???????

John ‘the' Bold, publisher of SI said,

"By partnering with SEMI we will be able to serve the semiconductor manufacturing industry in exciting new ways. This agreement is a great beginning."

Oh so right again John! But it is also a ‘great end'; a point that I am sure John really wanted to say—so I thought I would say it for him! OK John?

What wasn't a great end was the closing down of Micro Magazine in July. That didn't lack advertising but lacked the new owner's interest in stand-alone publications as their game plan leverages trade mags in the North American market to push their line of trade shows and exhibitions. The fact that SEMI dominated the semiconductor equipment trade show business, not only in North America but worldwide, meant that Micro was deemed of no use to the new owners of the Cannon Publishing group and closed it down. (That's my take anyway!)

I haven't heard one bad word about Micro mag and its team that included Tom Cheney, its Editor: people seem genuinely sad to see the mag go, and Tom with it. In total contrast, of course, to the demise of SMM!

Anyway, the next bit of trade media news comes from PennWell, publishers of Solid State Technology (SST). I think from what the press release is trying hard/poorly not to say is that it is also stopping printing a stand-alone version of its SMT and Advanced Packaging titles. What they clearly stated, however, was that SST would become combined with Advanced Packaging and SMT, or is it the other way round???

So things don't seem to be going well there either!  I did like the bit in the release that highlighted to advertisers that they could now target ‘over 100,000 engineers immersed in the worldwide semiconductor manufacturing industry.' That bit made me laugh, as I can picture a lithography engineer picking up SST in the future and trying to get his head around lead-frame assembly trends and the latest advancements in PCB glues! D'oh!

Consolidation in the semiconductor trade media is obviously in full swing but from what I can see there is also a lot of dilution. That dilution will lead to more consolidation, no doubt.

SST could be in serious trouble of losing its identity or become so broad in its content coverage that it actually appeals to no one! I hope that doesn't happen and I hope publishers understand what dilution does is wrong, as it's the readers that suffer first and last!

My publisher has come to understand (bang heads against a wall), that you can be successful when specializing and being focused and differentiated, especially in a market that we compete in that is dominated by large multi-national publishing companies. For instance, I stopped covering back-end assembly stuff many years ago to focus on front-end, advanced processing and associated elements. We don't even bother with adding this online, which is cheaper and easier. Dilution is part of the problem remember—even online!

Proving the point even more, since the re-launch of fabtech.org in October 2005 we have grown unique visitor traffic virtually month-on-month and have seen record levels set time and time again. August, which should be a slow month due to vacation time, turned out to be the best yet, with a 50 percent growth in traffic! We are a very focused site, remember, and this strategy is definitely working for us so far!

That was capped off with a call from CNN News to be interviewed on TV! Though I would have preferred being interviewed on some technology breakthrough rather than the job cuts planned at Intel, it was interesting to note that the CNN reporter had read some of my blogs on AMD and news about Intel job cut rumours, which actually prompted them to get in touch. So our focused non-diluted approach worked that way too!

Now that's one to celebrate when I am down the pub Friday after writing this!