Question on April 1981 issue.

[Abramo Russo]

#1 Picture - At the bottom of the cover says: See "Gorilla" Wednesday, April, 8, on PBS TV.

#2 Picture -  At the bottom of the cover says: Official Journal of the NGS Washington D.C.  

Why this difference?                                    

[George Thomas Wilson]

Abramo,

I'm sure someone on this site has a definitive answer for you but my guess would be the difference between the issues mailed to the members and the ones sold on newsstands.

Tom Wilson

[Abramo Russo]

Thanks Tom....i appreciated your input!!!

[Philip Riviere]

Tom,

Never saw this difference before.. Usually news stand issues have a bar code on the front but I don't know if they used bar codes in 1981...

Phil

[George Thomas Wilson]

Phil,

I remember back in the late '60s there being a red stripe TV ad on some, but not all, issues.  I don't know the reason for that difference either.

Tom

[Scott T. Shier]

Re: typically, that difference happend stateside owing to the month-long printing process, per issue. So, as TV schedules were buttoned up, they'd ad the red banner ribbon or text say, in the 3rd or 4th week of printing a March 1970, so that the 1st 2 weeks worth of copies were sans this.

[Philip Riviere]

Abramo,

Upon  further research I found  the reason for the difference.  I found 25 copies having the gorilla TV ad and 3 having the Nat Geo Society logo. The difference being  the 3 with the Nat Geo Society logo are from the UK and Australia and the 25 gorilla ads are from the USA. So the foreign issues would not have ads for US TV......

Phil

[Abramo Russo]

WOW!! Thanks a lot Philip!! I feel blessed to be part of this corner. When you say 25 & 3 copies means that you have a used bookstore?

best regards

Abramo

[Philip Riviere]

Abramo,

No used bookstore (I wish I had one)...Did a search on E-Bay for 4-81 issues and got 28 returns...

Phil

[Abramo Russo]

Perfect!! Very good idea! Thanks Phil.

[Scott T. Shier]

great clarification homework, Phil !

[Scott T. Shier]

FYI reminder, or note:

The venerable and inculcated National Geographic Magazine was never on newsstands until 2000. There would have been no such thing as barcodes prior to this.

It was a big deal at the time this change was made, and it has lot to do with how the covers started to get "cluttered" in terms of aesthetic, due to the commercialilzed mindset of retail/newsstand 'marketing' principles.

*Except: in limited test markets (for which I have no definitive list), there were some locations starting in earlier 1999 that also had newsstand copies. Now, an anomaloy is that some had bar codes, but during the 1999/2000 roll-out, it has seemed that NGM's were on the newsstand in the opaque poly-bags that we see today w/ mailed member's copies. Up into 2004, NGM was still being mailed in those sloppy brown bag wraps, that caused so many complaints about glue reside on our NGM's (note: I don't mean the brown sleeved mailing wraps that were issued from the circa 1910's through earlier 2000's - those are sorely missed)

Nat Geo proper doesn't ever seem to be able to clarify these details about the retailing of NGM copies . . . they've been asked. At the time, I never thought to save any of the press releases or newsspaper snippets that talked about NGM "going newsstand".

And as always, there may be an exception in my information. It's possible that someone outside of the U.S. (or N. America, with Canada) may be able to come forth and let us know that in England, or elsewhere, they saw NGM newsstand copies sooner than we did. It's been --and is--common for the Society and NGV (ie, NG Ventures Inc. -- the corporate side of NG) to roll-out and try out things globally before implementing it stateside. Prime example being the Channel. It was already in existence since 1997 in U.K. areas, before premiering to big fanfare in America in January, 2001.

Anyway, just some tidbits.

    ~ Scott S.