Another year, another MR Reader's Choice Awards

[canrailfan]

MR has put up the survey for the 2020 Reader's Choice Awards.

I had a brief look at it and once again it seems to be missing a lot of great 2019 models from many manufacturers. There's a heavy bias toward Athearn, Broadway Limited, Bachmann and Atlas. It also appears to be for models that were 'available' in 2019. Several locomotives mentioned were released well before 2019.

Many questions are scale specific. I'm an HO modeler and don't follow what's happening in N or O scale. I'd tend to leave N and O questions unanswered.

Once again this year I won't be submitting a reply to the survey. I think the idea of the Reader's Choice Awards is valid but needs much more effort put into its organization.

[gevohogger]

Jan 6, 2020 14:37:08 GMT -8 canrailfan said:

There's a heavy bias toward Athearn, Broadway Limited, Bachmann and Atlas. 

Translation: Athearn, Broadway Limited, Bachmann and Atlas bought the most advertising in 2019.

[mvlandsw]

After seeing the published article I think the whole idea is a waste of time and magazine space.

Not that there aren't good products. Just that everyone knows about them already. Why waste space promoting things when the manufacturers do that pretty well and some of the items are not even available anymore.

Mark Vinski

[edwardsutorik]

Wow. Model Railroader's list and mine are in almost exact alignment:


MR: Athearn, Broadway Limited, Bachmann, Atlas

ME: Athearn, ScaleTrains, Tangent, Moloco


See. Only slightly different.

And, yes, there are some others that could go on my list--didn't want to overwhelm you. Or MR.


Ed

[valenciajim]

I agree that advertisers have a better chance of getting their products selected. I also agree that in an online world the hobbyists know what the best products are long before the magazine gets published. The whole thing is a retrospective of the prior year's products, many of which are no longer available by the time the edition is published.

I was amazed that Rapido only got an honorable mention.

[ambluco]

It was also interesting that the best narrow gauge passenger car was a Thomas & Friends car.

[Judge Doom]

Ah yes, the legacy media "gatekeeping" who to feature in the internet age. They're doing their readers a disservice by only featuring their paid advertiser's models and not featuring the latest and greatest from all manufacturers in the industry. But, that's how advertising works: you gotta pay to play, and the Reader's Choice awards are a form of advertising and pedestalizing. Word was there wasn't a Rapido product at all in the previous MR RCA's because they didn't buy any advertising.

But, that old fogey who doesn't use the internet and relies on Model Railroader magazine as the model railroad bible might get suspicious of the honesty of MR when he sees that his Rapido FL9 or F40 he bought over the last year down at the LHS is nowhere to be found, but the Atlas MP15 and Athearn F-units available for decades all end up taking top honours, along with Bachmann products in the running.

Makes you wonder how honest their product reviews are, but we all know by now most are fluff pieces.

[nsc39d8]

I have not bought a MR in years. I might have thumbed thru one to see if an article was worth reading. ON the RCA's, I agree with the Judge, same old products and not worth the effort to look at them.
It's been more than 10 years since I believed a product review from them. I quit MR when I saw they are still using the 1950's way to build layouts.

[Colin 't Hart]

The last two issues have been down to 76 pages, and the pickings are getting very slim indeed.