2. With this huge recession
hitting everybody hard, how
is the future of magazines
looking? This PowerPoint
will delve into what my
opinion of the future of
magazines really is.
3. Do they have a future both as a product as well as
online? AND how have audience habits changed when
consuming media?
I believe that with all the websites and technology nowadays, you don't need
to read from a magazine/magazine website to find out the information you
want. Websites such as Facebook and MySpace has many resources where you
can find things out, people can set statuses which means that ‘word of mouth’
starts happening resulting in people not needing to buy their daily magazine to
find out the gossip. So therefore I believe they do not have much of a
future, the only thing that may have a future is online due to the growing
quality of technology. This is also backing up the idea that people habits
around consuming media (magazines) is massively changing, the average
teenager carries around with them £1000 worth of technology, with mainly all
of them having access to the internet.
4. What has been the impact of this change on the
magazine industry (production, exhibition, distribution
and consumption)? Have circulation figures
dropped/increased?
Many magazine sales have been dipping for the past few years, with the most
popular selling men's magazine ‘Men’sHealth’ having their sales dipping by
11.1% in the last few years, as well as sales for NME, a popular music
magazine, dropping 14.3% in the first half of 2011. This crisis for the magazine
companies is happening because of the technology/internet we have now, on
my mobile phone I have an application which tells me what's going on in the
world today, this is updated all the time and its right at my fingertips wherever I
go.
This is just a small
example of what is going
on with magazines
nowadays, this is 5 out of
hundreds of statistics. And
yes, they are all as bad as
this.
5. What do audiences think of magazines? (do they trust
them? How do they use them? What do they
like/dislike about them?)
There are many different genres of magazines, ones for men, women or maybe
both, different ages etc. Depending on what genre it is people may or may not
trust them, for example if an elderly person goes from reading a newspaper to a
magazine then they will see a huge difference, also gossip magazines are
normally associated with younger people. Younger people tend to use them
when they have time to kill, maybe on a long journey or just when they don’t
have anything else to do, magazines are liked for these reasons, however, like in
all other occasions technology gives them a lot easier access to the information,
and you do not need to buy a magazine everyday to find out what's going on.
6. This image is showing a person turning a magazine page on his computer,
this is proving that its not only me that thinks the future of magazines
remain online/on technology.
7. What about the impact of advertising? (this is a
fundamental aspect to the magazine industry…how
will advertising influence its future?)
Many companies pay to advertise in magazines, for example in gossip
magazines they might advertise make up because they are usually associated
with women. However, with the use of internet becoming larger the need for
advertising in magazines is shrinking, because they can advertise their
products online, also the sales for magazines are dipping so the companies
no longer want to pay a large sum of money to advertise themselves in the
magazine. As well as sales, advertising funds the magazines hugely, in the
future magazines may be spending more money to create the magazines
then they are actually getting from selling them, resulting in making
absolutely no profit and going into debt.
