Closure
George, who left Asiaweek before its troubles began, laments the death of the magazine after O'Neill was removed. With Asiaweek's demise, George said, his only regret was the way "the magazine was devalued by the very people who took it upon themselves to nurture it. That is why I shed no tears now as the concept itself was killed in 1994 when Mike was removed by the new management. Its closure is a mere burial."
According to Time, the reason for the closure was due to an advertising slump. Executives at Time insist their decisions were based on economic, not editorial, considerations.
The New York Times columnist Thomas Crampton writes, "Asiaweek and the Far Eastern Economic Review were the only weekly magazines with a strong Asia focus through the 1980s. But competition grew in the 1990s when global and local media companies expanded into regional editions. In addition to several small regionally financed magazines, The Economist, Fortune, BusinessWeek and Forbes all began aggressive expansions into Asia. These global titles could rely on skeletal staffs and economies of scale."
According to Crampton, besides the "brutal competition for limited advertising revenue", another plausible reason for the shakeout was "the suffocating embrace of U.S.-based media giants with an American-centric perspective." For Asiaweek's founding editor, Time Warner's closure of the 26-year-old publication plays into Asian fears of a U.S.-centric world media. "The mandarins of Manhattan fully know Asia's potential," said T.J.S. George, who is now an editorial consultant for the New Indian Express Group. "They want a total monopoly for Time magazine."
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