Introduction About Magazines

By Author: Arsenalo
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Under the impact of television, both radio and magazines became specialized or segmented media. Because advertisers could reach the same mass audience more cheaply and quickly via television, many well-known mass circulation magazines, including Look and the Saturday Evening Tag Heuer Replica Post, went out of business. Recently, magazines targeted at special audiences—such as Motorcyclist, Fantasy, and Science Fiction—have sprung up. There are only a few national magazines, and three are newsweeklies: Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News df World Report. Time is owned by Time Inc., and Newsweek by the Washington Post Company. These examples are typical, because many magazines today are owned by chains, large corporations, and conglomerates, in part because it is very costly to start a magazine and because the survival rate for magazines is low. (By contrast, U.S. News is employee-owned.) On average, only 10 percent of new magazines survive beyond their first year; nevertheless, as of 1998, there were 2,724 consumer, farm, and international magazines.

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... degree of specialization in this medium can be seen by looking more closely at some of the mass circulation magazines. Many publish special editions designed to permit advertisers to reach specific audiences. Time, for instance, publishes regional editions, editions aimed at special groups, and an international edition. One edition goes primarily to college students, another to the 1.3 million people living in the most affluent zip code areas within metropolitan markets, and stills another to about 640,000 business and professional people. Similarly, Sports Illustrated publishes four regional editions and a special homeowners' edition, limited to slightly more than 500,000 subscribers located in zip code areas with the highest concentrations of home ownership. Other magazines, such as Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping, publish Spanish-language editions. In other words, although mass circulation magazines exist, many of them publish special editions with advertising aimed at distinct audiences.

Magazines have several advantages over television for advertisers. According to data collected by the Pew Center for the People and Cartier Roadster Replica Watches the Press, 20 percent of people who earn more than $75,000 or are over 50 years of age read a newsmagazine regularly, compared with an average 13 percent of all other age and income categories. A magazine becomes a trusted and familiar source reflecting an image with which the subscriber can identify. In addition, some advertisers now banned from television, like cigarette manufacturers, must rely on print outlets.