ORIGINAL: MikeL
Marc, the reviews here come from the marketing side of RCU. You know that better than anyone. There are deadlines for publishing that would be entirely artificial (after all, there's no need to print anything), if it weren't for product introductions and advertising campaigns on the part of the companies providing the products for review.
There really are no "marketing sides" as we are way too small to have divisions. RCU is made up of me, my partner michael, erick who handles ad sales and a handful of part time contractors (all hobbyists) and volunteer moderators. We have no deadlines to publish anything here and no due dates. As a courtesy to the companies that do send product for review we do ask that writers turn stuff around as fast as they can. Sometimes that is a week, a month, 3 months and other times over a year.
The writers, to my knowledge, don't control the content of the reviews. Addendums must be run through Erick Royer, who coincidentally also handles the advertisers. Am I wrong about this?
The writers control all the content of the reviews on RCU. Your statement above is false. There are no addendums that are not given to the writers to put into the reviews. They get them and add them. Erick Royer has nothing to do with the review process at all other than putting the vendors in touch w/me if we need to find a writer for a particular product review. Once that is done I handle everything w/the writer and often put the writers in touch w/the vendors when applicable thus keeping my influence out of the mix.
Reviewers aren't paying for the product. There's rarely any discussion of value, and there's never discussion of competing products that may provide better value/quality/performance. Why is that? My assumption is that it is because it would quite naturally spoil the opinion of those providing the product for review, and might turn some of their ad budget to outlets other than RCU.
Writers don't pay for some product and others they do. Not all product we review is given to us at no cost or discount. Some of it the cost is borne by the writer. Additionally most reviews require substantially MORE investment on behalf of the writer to complete then the product they are given. Try completing a 90 size arf or giant scale plane and figure out the cost for rx, servos, engine, etc. No great bargains here. Yeah..once the review is done they can keep it, sell it, give it away, crash it, put it on display or whatever. If they do go the route of selling it they are lucky for their 40 to 100 hours invested to get back what they put into it to complete it considering the 50 cents to 75 cents on the dollar resale value of anything out of the box in this hobby.
Doing reviews is no glamourous or money making venture. You do it because you love it, period. If you don't believe me and want the inside track on this do a review for RCU. I'll get you whatever plane you want. You complete it and then you walked the mile in the writers shoes and can comment firsthand on the rcu process and how it works and how profitable it can be for your time. These review writers do what they do out of passion. Do just one and you will realize that is the only reason anyone would do one, period. I guarantee it. You will have to take the challenge to see it though. There is no other way to realize this so just lmk.