'Scenes' only now no longer appears in print. Why that's pretty special.

I remember it well, it was during a meeting of the magazine industry, sometime in 2012 or 2013. There was a grave mood in Amsterdam's De Balie debate centre, because the circulation and sales figures of the major magazine publishers (plural at the time) had just been announced. The downward trend that had started years ago had nothing to do with the crisis, but with 'online'. That insight slowly broke through. Editors were sent home and replaced by underpaid freelancers, titles disappeared by the bushes. Only the Linda, Libelle and Happinez were still doing something. 

At the low point of the evening, just before the hearty drinks everyone was longing for, Jos Schuring stepped forward, a magazine man who had been a full participant in the downward spiral at CJP-Magazine. He announced that, against all the gloom, he was going to come up with a new paper magazine, about theatre. People chuckled somewhat incredulously and wished him luck. I also declared him crazy. But I am not always right. 

Retained marketing

That the magazine Scenes, which Schuring gave birth to in 2013, has lasted another 10 years is quite extraordinary. At the time, I was on the board of the Training Fund for Public Magazines and got the tough tidings every day. The average title that was still being marketed in those days was usually discarded after about three quarters of a year. Existing titles like Panorama and Vrij Nederland, long considered untouchable, were already on the drip of well-intentioned publishers who gave it one more chance. And another. And another.

Still, Scenes could be a success because the magazine was betting on an industry with a very conservative marketing practice. In January of 2014 wrote Hilde Smetsers, founder and still managing director of interest group Cultural marketing.co.uk on Culture Press, that among all cultural sectors, the performing arts were the most conservative. Theatres and concert venues then still thrived on the annual cycle of the brochure, which arrived on visitors' mats in May. 

After all, the public receives holiday pay in May, and that was long the time when brochures picked out the programme for the coming year, just as I used to compile my overpriced and never fulfilled wish lists for St Nicholas on the basis of toy shop leaflets. 

The 2013 gap

With the holiday money, Dutch theatre and concert audiences bought a place in the plush for a few hundred euros per person. The industry had been running on that since at least the 1950s. So all the energy of the marketing departments was focused on that seasonal brochure. Only when there was very much money and energy left, did they work on other paper marketing tools. Not to mention 'online'. 

Schuring jumped into that hole, which was made extra deep by the declining attention to theatre in the written press. Scenes existed thanks to intensive cooperation on content and distribution through theatres. For a little less than such an organisation would have to put into its own magazine, Scenes could provide special editions. The content was written by real journalists, carefully coordinated with the marketers so that it would not all turn too sour. 

What disappeared in the out-of-print supplements of regional and national newspapers could end up in Scenes: supernumerary journalists sat for recruiting interviews, laudatory portraits, fine behind-the-scenes peeks and friendly and funny columns by well-known theatre-makers. 

Last minute

During the second decade, the buying behaviour of the public changed. No longer was May festival month in the industry. Spectators no longer bought their five to 20 evening outings at once for an entire season, but postponed those purchases until shortly before the show, or even the day itself. The why is still being debated, but I believe many of the wealthy theatre-goers are now also self-employed or retired, rather than salaried, and so holiday pay no longer steals the role it used to. 

Seasonal brochures were less likely to pay for themselves. Even a magazine that had to rely on long deadlines like Scenes suffered from the last-minute culture. Short term reigns supreme now, and so online is the place that many theatres have neglected, when they should have invested in it, for instance by setting up joint ticketing and tour planning, which would also allow soft information to be offered centrally. This is still difficult. Planning your nightlife online is often more difficult than booking an international train journey. And that is saying something.   

'Corona' proved to be the definitive turning point. Many things in the industry, thanks to support and lack of business, continued to run like the cartoon character who goes over the edge of a precipice for a while, only to find out after a few metres that the ground under their feet was gone. The free fall thereafter set in for the paper marketing theatres in 2023, when everyone had recovered a bit, and otherwise fell back into old behaviours. 

Lessons learned?

Scenes now continues online, as part of the long-established site theatre.co.uk (which is still old-fashioned supply-oriented, and does little with visitor demand). There is, thanks to cooperation with all those theatres, a sizable mailing list though, so there is a chance of a successful relaunch. 'Online' there is quite a gap where a light journalistic medium like Scenes could fit in, although the unbundling, as it irrevocably goes along with 'online', make competition on all platforms cutthroat. 

The solid, tangible anchor, which constituted Scenes for a decade, must now hold its own in liquid form. The rest of the world of journalism and marketing has been floundering there for a while. I wonder what lessons Scenes has learned from it.