Promoting a TV Drama

Doctor who publicity from raybloggs

History of Music Magazines

Here is a useful link to a timeline of UK music magazines with profiles of all magazines published in the UK, including titles long since closed. Good for masthead ideas and content ideas. Circulation figures from 2008.

Top of the Pops magazine

Article about mentioning the music magazine sector containing 'Top of the Pops and how it is in decline here.

Publishing House Bauer Media

The two links here give a way in to the website of Publishing House 'Bauer Media'. This link connects to a page with links to all their magazine tiles. there is also a clear table showing how many of the titles are multi-platform, illustrating Crossmedia synergy (eg Kerrang! has the same design, brand identity and content values on several media platforms including magazine, radio, digital TV and internet) This link goes directly to the Kerrang! page and you will see a brief concept summary, platforms and a short target audience profile. these pages exist for every title that Bauer publishes. It is interesting to note that all Bauer's music magazines are found in the 'Men's Entertainment' section. Did you notice such a gender bias in reading them?

Target Audience Profiles

A Target Audience profile create a fictitious person who would be a typical audience member for your product. It is easier to create a media product with an particular individual in mind than when trying to address a large range of people.

Target Audience profiles also focus on the consumer and by considering what other products this person would buy (in the media and for entertainment) it helps the artistic director pitch the style that this person might like. This process also helps us identify the kind of advertising the magazine (or whatever product we are designing) would carry to reach the target audience.

Here is an example of a target audience profile for a High School Musical style film.

This is a target audience profile for a music magazine aimed at teenage girls.

A techno music magazine for teenage boys.

Researching Magazine Publishers and Market share

To explore which magazines re published by which publishing houses, click here.

A useful article giving the top 100 of recent UK magazine sales appears here.

Here is a summary of the top publishers serving the UK market

If you scroll through the five different pages, you will find some publishers are very specialist in the titles they publish and some publish a much wider range of magazines. You will recognise the biggest publishers when you find them because they have so many titles.