Magazine Covers

A magazine editors main concern is the cover, which they spend 50% of their time on because the cover attracts consumers and tells us some of the articles featured in the magazine. It is the "face" of the magazine and is a brand image, when someone walks into a shop, they can recognise the magazine's cover easily. The editor of Kerrang! makes sure the cover appeals to whole of its readership by consistently featuring different sub-genres of rock, and this makes sure everyone has something they'd like to read. The main sells are give aways, freebies such as stickers, posters, calenders, featuring well known artists and you can even turn the magazine into a collectors item; for example: collect all five issues with a member of My Chemical Romance on each cover. A cover-mounted CD boosts sales up to 40,000, most being casual readers and the editor must ensure that the magazine features more things; but cheaper to produce such as stickers etc. to keep these new readers. Mixmag offers a CD with every issue and this evidently raises the costs of production and therefore, raises the price of the magazine. This doesn't affect the sales because the CD may be the reason some readers buy the magazine so if they stopped producing the CDs, they may lose a lot of customers. Disadvantages of this are it is quite time consuming and people will expect free CD's with every issue. Two most important areas on a cover are the logo and the "sweetspot"; this is because the logo is for the consumers to recognise and confirms the brand image. The sweetspot attracts the audience because that is where the reader's eyes are drawn to first and they can scan through what will be featured and will want to buy the magazine. Two important things a magazine must try to do is be different everytime because readers will get bored of repetition and also, they must still have the same theme because it is part of the brand image and they should try to keep some things recognisable.

Magazine Publishers Research

Bauer

Company website: http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/

TV Channels: The Box, Smash Hits, 4Music.

Radio Stations: Magic and Kiss 100.

Other websites: http://www.heatworld.com/

Originally a small printing house, The Bauer Publishing Group has grown into a worldwide publishing company, now producing over 282 magazines. Some mainstream titles include Heat, FHM, Closer, Kerrang!, Q.

They also provide for a niche market, and have a wide variety to choose from such as

Your Horse, Model Rail, Golf World, and Practical Photography.

The company seems to have a musical brand image because the most popular magazines they publish are mainstream music magazines, although they do publish other types of magazines, both aimed at a wide general audience .

IPC Media

Company website: http://www.ipcmedia.com/

Other websites: http://www.housetohome.co.uk/, http://www.countrylife.co.uk/, http://www.nme.com/,

IPC Media is one of the United Kingdom's leading consumer magazine and digital publishers, with a large portfolio selling over 350 million copies each year. The company is split into five divisions, producing a range of 80 magazines, both niche and mainstream as well as other forms of media. 26 million UK adults read an IPC magazine, which is over 44%. The company works with magazines on TV listings, music and film, lifestyles, health, men's interests etc. Some examples are NME, Country House, The Field, Classic Boat. Many of the magazines published by IPC are focussing on the countryside, health and lifestle, which evidently means they aim at a middle aged and older audience who are interested in a "healthy living".

BBC Magazines

Company website: http://www.bbc.co.uk

TV Channels: BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, CBBC, Cbeebies, BBC News

Radio Stations: Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4, Radio 5 etc.

Other websites: http://news.bbc.co.uk/

BBC is a well established company, they produce many niche magazines, most of which are based on their shows, focusing on home, garden and education, aimed at adults preschool and preteens. Some adult titles include Countryfile, Wildlife Magazine, Radio Times. Some preschool/preteen magazines they produce are Doctor Who Adventures, Charlie and Lola, Teletubbies, Top of the Pops and Top Gear. There are many magazines that have a variety of different audiences, covering a wide range of topics. The BBC covers many other medias, and magazines is not their main concern.

Development Hell

Company website: http://www.developmenthell.co.uk/

Other websites: http://www.mixmag.net/, http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/

Development Hell is a small independent publishing company, which produces two monthly niche music magazines aimed at an older generation, The Word and Mixmag. The company aims at people that are interested in older music, and at club and dance music. The company is presented as being a small company providing it's readership with good quality magazines because they do not have that much to concentrate on.