Overview of the Magazine Industry

Overview of the Magazine Industry

The two most popular magazines in the UK are “TV Choice” and “What’s on TV?” respectively. This shows that TV guide magazines are proving to still be as popular as ever, even with TV listings easily available on the internet and programme guides on the TV. Other magazines in the top 10 include “Radio Times”, “Slimming World” and “Closer”. Radio Times is partially a TV guide like the top 2. “Closer” is a women’s magazine.  Women’s Magazines are proving to still be quite popular as other magazines are also in top ten, including “Take a Break” which is the third most popular magazine in the UK with over 602,000 copies sold per week. A single page advert in a top women’s magazine has been known to cost £250,000 in the past. Niche magazines cost about £10,000 for the same advert, for example, a gardening magazine. Adverts will generally be cheaper if the advertiser makes a long term commitment to the magazine. Magazines in general have a much smaller audience than they used to. This is obviously due to the rise of the internet as news can be found on the internet as soon as it is released, and magazines can only report news when they are next published. Articles can also be found online so there is not really any selling point for magazines in 2015.  There is no reason for the consumer to buy magazines, therefore there is no reason to make them. Some magazines have a place in 2015 though, many niche magazines have what is almost like a cult following and are very successful because of that. They know their fans and play to their desires. This is why these magazines are successful but mainstream magazines such as NME have died out in recent years and are currently at their lowest buy-rates since the magazine began.