MAGAZINE INDUSTRY OVERVIEW

There are more than 8000 titles published in the UK which are categorised for example; consumer which is general magazines which are sold in the newsagents or online, staff magazine which are magazines which inform staff about their company and academic journals which are magazines for people in things such as university which are at a level of discussion of all sorts of arcane topics. The largest magazine publishers in the consumer category are as the following; Bauer which owns 25% of the magazines being published in the UK, IPC MEDIA which is now known as Time Warner who own 20% of the magazines being published in the UK, the BBC who own 7.8% of the magazines being published and finally Hearst who own 7.3% of the magazines being published here in Britain. In the UK today there are over 3,200 different consumer titles where in 1980 there were only 1,383 consumer titles, from this we can see a massive rise in the publishing industry. On average 1.4 billion magazines are sold each year where in the 1970’s 2.1 billion where sold, this shows us due to technology magazines are easier to access meaning there is no need to go out and buy one. 85% of the population in Britain reads magazines spending 2 billion pounds on magazines yearly. Advertisers spend over 700 million pounds on magazines which were recorded in 2008 and on average 500 new magazines are launched every year for the past 10 years. A brief history of the magazine industry looks as the following; Playboy magazine was launched in the 1950’s, which at the time was the first magazine to mix high commerce sex and glamour. Then in the 1970’s magazines such as Cosmopolitan where published these magazines offered women a sense of freedom in a man made world, finally in the 2000’s magazines such as Heat and Hello where launched which offered a new culture in depth information on Celebrity life styles.