Branciforte

Letting Good Times Roll

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• published: 25 Feb 2015
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Rich Branchiforte, owner of Good Times music magazine, explains how his publication, and his career, got its start. Rich Branciforte, a rock ‘n’ roll mad 22-year-old with a Columbia MBA, had two job offers: Work for Jimi Hendrix or AT&T;. Hendrix would pay $90 a week. The phone company offered $210, not bad for the late 1960s. But with the guitar master he wouldn’t have to cut his hair, he could live in jeans and sneakers and travel the world writing press releases, hanging with genius musicians and beautiful girls. The clincher: Hendrix’s manager said a large part of Branciforte’s duties would be collecting money from club owners before gigs. The Queens native decided the years spent and money borrowed to get an MBA weren’t so he just could end up as the muscle for a rock band. He took the AT&T; job. In the Westbury office of Good Times, the bi-weekly publication he’s published since 1969 after splitting from corporate America, Branciforte said, “I never imagined what I’d be doing for the next 40 years is going into bars and clubs to get money they owe me for ads.” It’s been a rollicking ride for Branciforte and his free music and entertainment guide to Long Island. Circulation is somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000, with “pass along” circulation, or the actual number of people who read Good Times, somewhere between 30,000 and 35,000, he said. Branciforte’s model reader has been the same since the late 1960s: a Hofstra junior who picks up Good Times at school, brings it home where her younger brother checks it out before taking it to a friend’s house where they check out listings and eyeball an ad for a music store. A study done by the Magazine Publishers of America showed advertising revenue fell for almost every magazine and newspaper in 2008, with an across-the-board decrease of almost 12 percent from 2007, and a 17 percent decrease in ad pages for the fourth quarter. But not at Good Times, Branciforte said. Without giving specific numbers, the publisher said ad revenue was up. In fact, business is so good he’s expanding into Queens this fall. Branciforte drops names such as Jerry Garcia, Duane Allman and Bruce Springsteen like any good music insider raconteur, but when it comes to business, he’s that Ivy League MBA grad of years ago. In the beginning, Branciforte kept Good Times focused on rock ‘n’ roll. “We kept away from politics because we weren’t in a position to do an adequate job,” Branciforte said. “Then we covered film and dining and we kept evolving slowly over the years. We added a jazz and blues page. Now we have bowling and skateboard columns.” Instead of street hawkers distributing his publication, as was the model for startup music magazines back in the day, Branciforte put the papers in the hands of people who frequented his advertisers, distributing them mostly in bars, clubs and retail music stores. He also created an artificial demand. “We deliberately under-distributed it on Tuesdays so there would be no copies left if you didn’t get one early, and people would ask for it,” he said. “This created traffic in stores, with people looking for it, and traffic is what every retailer wants.” Going against the grain when it comes to technology has kept advertisers loyal to Good Times, he said. “Most people are so off base with falling all over the Internet they’ve forgotten their primary business,” he said. “Web versions cannibalize print versions.” At one point Good Times offered current content for free online but circulation tanked. “Common sense. Why go to a retail store to pick it up if you can read it online?” he said. “And online you miss full page ads, half-page ads.” Now the Good Times site provides the previous issue free but not the current one. Publications as varied as the New York Times and community newspapers are catching up with this idea, with a growing debate in journalism circles about charging readers for content. Newsday’s parent, Cablevision, announced recently that the days of giving away its content for free online are numbered. Next up for Branciforte: Celebrating 40 years in business in June and the launch of Queens Good Times. But first he wants to talk about a column called The Dungeon, dedicated to Swedish Death Metal, a genre that has a sizeable following on Long Island. “It’s huge,” he said, “but you have to always throw in Norwegian Death Metal.” VIDEO: Branchiforte talks about his beginnings and the moments that put his publication on the map. Read more: http://libn.com/2009/04/17/print-first-model-keeps-good-times-magazine-humming/#ixzz3SnH2lFZl