Part of my job involves calculating what businesses in the UK are doing and forecasting growth and reasons behind the changes.
Applying my knowledge with other bits of info here is what I suspect is going on.
Firstly, the magazines, we get a public and a private edition of the WT and 1 Awake. The main benefit here is less printing. Before the cuts:
Watchtower approx 28.5 million per issue x 2 a month = 57 million
Awake approx 34.5 million per issue x 2 a month = 69 million
Total magazines to print per month = 126 million
What we have today:
The Public Watchtower now reports a circulation of 37 million, while no figure is given in the private edition. Both magazines are described as semimonthly on page 2. So I suspect the 37 million is the combined printing total of the public and private Watchtowers, which would be about right, approx 29 million public and 8 million private.
This reduces the printing per month to:
WT (both) 37 million
Awake 35.5 million
New Total magazines to print per month = 72.5 million!
That's 53.5 million less per month to print! This has been done for keeping costs down.
On an interesting note a while back the Kingdom Ministry's were full of info regarding several new high-tech printing presses that had been purchased capable of printing thousands of magazines per minute.
I've heard people visiting Bethel complain that "the presses are never running when we visit Bethel". I've also heard a Bethel brother saying that "when they are running their printing capacity is higher than ever before, but when they are not working this brings the gain down below the average printing speed of the presses they replaced over each working week".
They have also increased the magazine lead time, previously we only had the magazines for the next 6-8 weeks, now we have them with around 8 or 9 week lead times, this is to increase the margin for printing for when they have problems with the presses. Basically, they have "not sat down and calculated the cost" and made the same mistake as a lot of businesses and government departments-brought into what is thought to be a long-term cost saving and this has actually cost them more then the salesman told them.
The Meeting changes
The meeting changes are most certainly just the first part of a change, there is a second half that has not been made public yet-most likely a change to the elder arrangement. The reduction in meetings (from 5 hours per week to 3.5 hours per week from 2009) is not for cash. An interesting note is that if a business has high staff turnover (including staff members with a long service record) then they may soften any restrictive rules or implement procedures to try to stem the flow of employee's leaving to help steady the business (such as dress down days or social events). I believe this is also what the brass at Brooklyn are doing with the meeting cutbacks. Since this is a religion this is likely to cause a split, those with busy schedules enjoying the freedom and wanting more and the older ones feeling that they have been let down and betrayed somehow.
Other changes in the wind
I honestly think they are currently planning other emergency "new light" to keep members from leaving. However this has to be carefully planned. For instance if they lift the ban on Blood, this will stop any future issues, however it will open up the floodgates for legal cases over past blood cases and also cause questions to be raised in the minds of the members. However, not doing anything will definitely bring more legal cases as and when they occur. I think they are watching the legal cases currently taking place before sending out any "new light".
What they are doing is making bigger and bigger changes, each time waiting for feedback and monitoring the effect it is having before they make another...
All the changes. Piecing it together.
by DisconnectingDrone 12 Replies latest jw friends
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DisconnectingDrone
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heathen
I for one know of some "new" old light that they need to reintroduce and that being the appointed times of nations dogma which they changed , according to posters on the board , back to superior authorities being man made governments .This would have been blaspheme and treason to the kingdom crown . They did that around the time they decided to associate with the UN , from what I understand . Romans 13 does not apply any more .
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MeneMene
Welcome to JWD - I had missed your earlier posts so I went back and caught up.
The info on the magazine printing is exactly what I had looked for but did not access to the magazines to see what the printing numbers were. I had been curious too about how they would change the numbers being printed.
The 34.5 million x 2 copies of Awake was the numbers before they went to one mag a month, right? How many did they print when they went to one issue a month?
Enjoyed reading your analysis of the other changes too. Looking forward to more - -
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yknot
Great post!
Don't be such a stranger to the board....
I don't see the blood being any further watered down until Gene is in the infirmary or resting in a coffin.
But if the partakers get too large I can see the argument being made that all can partake since the covenant with the Israelites included everyone but still had kings and priests. Of course this new shows all the faithful that "we are just that closer!"
Keep posting....I am enjoying your opinions
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BabaYaga
I agree, great post, Disconnecting! Thanks for the "auditor's insight".
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anglise
Welcome to JWD DD
like your reasoning and thankyou for the stats.
Will watch the org for the next move.
Their demise cannot come quick enough
Anglise
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MeneMene
Please excuse my 'senior moment' in my post above made yesterday.
I just realized this morning that you had already included the # printed after they changed to the single Awake - 35.5 million.
Maybe what confused me was the fact they cut the number so much - from 69 million to 35.5 million per month.
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OnTheWayOut
Remember that they collect all the field circus reports. They know that many magazines
never get placed officially. They know how many they printed and how many the publishers
say they placed, so the rest go to publishers. They know how many publishers there are.They could see the waste- imagining them piling up at each member's home or trunk of their
car.They can also reduce the total run on books easily. Just never offer them in the field and you
don't need as many new ones. They must be tabulating the donations to the worldwide work
and seeing if it falls off significantly with these changes. Since virtually nobody donates for the
books, I imagine the worldwide fund (almost entirely from JW's) isn't changing so much from
it's previous (low) amount.Conventions and literature distribution at conventions must still be making money. They would
not do them if they were not profitable. I imagine a time when they say, "Go to the DC to get your
new books because they will not be available anywhere else." I imagine cutting the DC to 2 days,
hoping to squeeze the same profit out of the grateful members.The bulk of their money is in retention. Their numbers crawled up past 6 million and have not
severely dropped yet. They know the growth is in foreign language groups in their well-established
territories, but otherwise they don't see much growth. Expect the foreign language growth to dry
up as the immigrants start getting tired of the JW's, and for the thrust to be on keeping the
former members from leaving. -
Pachemu Nyet
Very interesting analysis. Makes a lot of sense.