What’s your video skill level?

The old adage goes ”you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” And this is true, from what we’ve seen. We’ve got a pretty diverse audience, with all kinds of skill sets between them. Some are rank amateurs with no background and others are extremely advanced users.

Around here, we try to have a little bit of something for everyone. We often have reviews of some rather high-end equipment alongside our column for the beginning beginners. But as part of trying to get our beginners up to speed, we end up running a lot of the same articles over and over again (how many times can we really write about three-point lighting?) This is one of the things we hear a lot from people who tell us they aren’t planning to renew–”it’s too repetitive”.

Issue planning is an interesting but chaotic time around here. Not only do we try to predict what’s going to be hot this year, but we try to keep balance between beginning readers and more advanced readers. And the outcome? A number of our most advanced readers “outgrow” us and don’t renew.

It’s more interesting now in that we’re one of the few video publications left on the shelf. Will we reclaim readers? Will more readers move over to the web instead? Time will tell.