It has been suggested that there be a reduced membership rate for those not receiving Amateur Radio magazine.
This follows the VK1WIA news that the WIA journal is going to be bi-monthly in 2018.
Reduced WIA memberships for electronic-only magazine access were trialled a few years ago, and withdrawn as this didnt result in either increased membership take-up or proportional cost reductions.
The only "bankable" cost saving is in postage costs.
The cost of production and printing either dont change, or due to the inverse-volume related to the size of print runs, the unit print cost per magazine actually goes up.
The WIA is running at a loss and the board has focused on major reductions in cost that can be achieved with near immediate effect, such as reducing the number of magazine issues from 11 to 6 per year.
A no-magazine membership class has no certainty around how many and how quickly WIA members would adopt this as their preferred option. Even if say 10% of members chose this option, it would take more than year to take effect due to membership renewal cycles, plus the cost savings would be minimal at this percentage level of take-up compared to other available options to return to positive cash flow.
The WIA board appreciates the opportunity to explain what may seem to be a simple matter, but in fact is rather complex when looked at in greater detail.
From text edition for NOV 5 2017 - VK NATIONAL NEWS BROADCAST ON VK1WIA : http://www.wia.org.au/members/broadcast/wianews/
Also in MP3 edition of news available at: http://www.wia-files.com/podcast/wianews-2017-11-05.mp3