Let me open by saying that I appologize for the lenght of this post and preface my input by saying that I am playing "Devil's Advocate" and the information below does not neccessarily reflect my opinion...I'm trying to simply state facts.
I've just reviewed one year's worth of FSM magazine (May 03 - April 04) for another tread that I'm putting together. Why this time frame? Because my 3-year subscription started in May 03.
There is an assertion that FSM has become a military modeling magazine. Outside the automotive genre (which is almost all non-military), the majority of models produced are of military subjects. Therefore I would expect more milltary articles - or articles about military subjects - than non-military articles. With this in mind, I reviewed all of the articles and broke them down by Military and Not Military in nature. This can be difficult in some cases because some of it comes down to interpretation. Is the article on Chuck Yeager's F-105 near-space plane military or not? The plane is clearly military, but the subject is more historical in nature and not combat related in any way. (I called this one not military, BTW). I judged the 88 articles:
Military - 56
Non-Military - 32
BTW: I would love to see similar statistics for say three years ago, five years ago, and ten years ago.
Of the 32 non-military articles, 11 are "General Interest" with applications in every modeling genre. This is just about what I would have expected. Roughly 1 out of every 3 articles is of a non-military subject or nature while 2 are military. However, FSM is a long way from AFV Modeler (100%), Military in Scale (100%), or other similar magazines. (As stated above, I would love to see an annual statistic from say 1978!)
I've read somewhere that 7 out of every 10 models produced today in all genres is of a military subject. I don't know if that number is completely correct or not, but based on what I see in most model shops and at most general interest model shows, I think it's probably ballpark.
When I was growing up in the 60's and 70's, there were by far more non-military models - as a percentage of all models available - than it appears that there are today. I can remember row upon row of car models for as far as you could see. Shoot, there were at least as many LeMans, Indy, and Sportscar models as just about any other area. There were of course plenty of military aircraft models, but there were also quite a few civilian aircraft models. Military armor and vehicles were nothing more than a nitch and usually had only 10% (or less) of the shelf space.
Today it is far different and if it has changed, I think FSM has changed because modelers have changed. I can remember there used to be two guys in my home town that built civilian aircraft exclusively. Piper Cubs, the "Spirit of St. Louis, the "Spruce Goose", and many of the latest airliners of the day were all they built. Today, I only know one person who builds civilian aircraft and if you don't count airliners, I can count on three fingers the number of contemporary civilian aircraft I have seen at the last four model shows I've attended.
Additionally, a new modeler today can pick up just about any fairly new kit and with a bit of modeling skill, produce a model in less than a week that it would have taken a modeler with years of experience at least a month to produce back in the 1970's. The quality of kits, paints, and tools, not to mention the proliferation of information on the Internet, have all served to shorten the period of appenticeship for modelers around the world.
There are very few true "novice" modelers - as I was back in 1972 - left in the world. I knew nothing beyond the kit, the instructions, and whatever the hobby shop owner wanted to share - in my case, not much! All it takes today is two or three days on the Internet and anyone will know most of the basic principles to building a decent model. If you spend two or three months studying, a modeler today can amass the knowledge that it took several modelers years of trial and error to learn. I personally don't think that it would serve anyones interest to have FSM publish information that say 95 - 98% of the modeling community already knows. I could understand a few more "intermediate" type articles in the magazine, but then they would duplicating information that is already available. FSM relies on modelers to provide them with new techniques or new uses of old products. If modeler don't send this type of information in to the magazine, FSM cannot be faulted for not printing it - they don't know.
Finally, I can't close without saying that I think it's a bit unfair to make blanket assumptions or categorizations about FSM on the 60th Anniversary of possibly THE most important day in the past century. As stated above, military modeling represents a very large percentage of the modeling community and WWII modeling is the largest percentage of military modeling. I would expect similar coverage in July of 2014 for the 70th anniversary and possibly more in July 2019 for the 75th anniversary! I have not as yet received my July FSM, but I am eagerly anticipating its arrival.
I did not start receiving FSM until about two years ago, so I cannot comment on the degree to which it has changed. I do know that I plan I subscribing to FSM for at least the next four years (it's already paid for) and probably longer.
Thank you for your time,
Robert