News
Farewell, RCR
RCR Wireless closed its doors yesterday, after 25 years in the wireless business. With over five times the tenure, I have to admit, we enjoyed the competition.
The publication tried to stay hip to the times, but when the Web 2.0 economy met the Global Recession economy, they had to shut down. This isn’t a post to mock them… it’s pretty clear that they did what they could to keep an old-world publishing platform as modern as it could be.
But, what really scratched my head about RCR, was how it couldn’t find a niche. It tried to be the insider journal in all-things-wireless. With huge over-the-top overheads, I was amazed each year that the bought up massive floor space at CTIA. It’s pretty clear that was running on ad budgests that shrank to zero when the economy declined. And, while they did try to compete with PhoneNews.com in the device and carrier news… it wasn’t an earnest enough effort. They couldn’t gain a new niche, and lost the old one at the same time.
This is really a lesson in rolling with the punches. We’ve certainly learned that here at PhoneNews.com in this economy. But, we intend to stay in the game. We’re honored to maintain viewership that we have, and we intend to keep delivering the same quality of news… no matter how bad it gets out there.
I wish everybody at RCR News the best of luck in finding replacement employment. Now is not a good time to be unemployed. However, RCR spent the last few years in a steady decline from “respectable trade publication” to “tabloid”. When it wasn’t outright broken, their website randomly required registration (or payment) just to read articles. When I suggested to them that this may not be the best business model for a website, their response was that “most of the ‘free’ (wireless) news services clip news from us, without paying our reporters”.
But hey, what do I know?