a loss about Paris
 

After 51 years, Pariscope published their final edition this week,

What's the reason? Less readership, more on-line users?

Oh, that does seem a shame. Another print publication bites the dust. It is true though that I use the internet for listings these days and haven't bought Pariscope in years.

Pariscope has been online for at least two years. If you typed "pariscope" in Google, this came up:
http://www.premiere.fr/

If you want a paper copy, you can purchase Wednesday's Le Figaro, which has a magazine supplement listing most of what goes on during the week.

I have always bought it faithfully, but when they raised the price for the past 3 weeks from 0.90€ to 1.90€ it will make me miss it a little less. The competitor l'Officiel des Spectacles costs 1.00€.

That's quite a jump in price. I can see why you would miss it less!

I stopped buying the published edition of Pariscope when I suspected the listings were influenced by the advertising rather than providing an independent service.

I usually buy l'Officiel as it is cheaper and thinner (I think Pariscope had more padding and ads). I always buy one to carry around with me, makes it very easy to find out what is going on in the city. I don't carry around computers with me during the day, and in fact, don't have one on vacation, but you can't easily find a website that will give you listings of all the museum exhibitions in a couple pages like that, or cinema listings. If you go online, you are spending a lot of time looking at individual websites, I imagine.

I would never pay 1.9 euro for it. I think one advantage Pariscope had (or did at one time) was they listed a basic television listing guide in the back and l'Officiel did not. Useful for visitors.

I hardly ever bought it but recall buying l official more.

<I don't carry around computers with me during the day, and in fact, don't have one on vacation>

But most of the world does carry one, in the form of a smartphone, which explains axing the print edition. It's not gone, just relocated, and possibly more up to date on a daily basis than any print edition could be.

The company that sold Pariscope a few years ago made a point of not selling the internet domain rights, and that is one of the things that killed the paper edition -- not having its own website anymore.

Both Pariscope and l'Officiel are 90% advertising anyway. I always felt that they should be given away free for that reason. But for a long time they were at least both very cheap. Since 2002, Pariscope went from 0.30 to 0.50 to 0.70 to 0.90 which did not at all match inflation. The last couple of weeks at 1.90 were a voluntary death knell -- perhaps with a hope of financing the staff's termination indemnities.