The document provides a project brief for a unit on understanding the print industry. It outlines tasks for students to complete, including explaining financial issues and market trends in the print media industry. Students are to submit a completed workbook with examples. To earn a distinction, they must comprehensively explain trends and issues with clear examples and terminology. Competition is both positive and negative for companies, pushing innovation but also making market domination more difficult. Target audiences are important for magazines to understand to best design their content and advertising. Diversification and internationalization allow media companies to expand their business.

1. Understanding the Print Industry
Working Practices and Employment Contracts
Unit 11: Learning outcome 3
Name:___________________

2. PROJECT BRIEF
Unit(s)
Understanding
Print Based
Industries
Unit
No
11
Tutor(s)
Dave Bakes
Aims
The aim of this unit is to develop your understanding of the financial issues and market
trends within the print-based media industries. It’s important to understand the range of job
roles in the print industry and what they involve. This will then enable you to prepare
personal career development material.
Tasks/Notes
The print media industry is changing quickly and the old model of a few large businesses is changing.
Many new, nimble companies have formed and taken advantage of digital technology to hep them. In
this task, you will prepare a report for your head of department which outlines current trends and
financial issues in the print media industry.
Task 1: (P3, M3, D3)
Using the work book to help you, explain financial issues and market trends in the print based media
industry.
You should use information from your notes to help you.
You will also need to additional research to get more information and detailed examples to gain a
higher grade.
Your work should cover financial aspects such as sources of income, sources of expenditure,
business models, financial responsibilities, preparing a budget; costing and estimating and break
even analysis.
You should also report on market trends such as products and services, vision of organisations,
objectives and goals of organisation, competition, target audiences, international and national market
trends, convergence of media forms, diversification and internationalisation.
A completed hand book, typed up with examples is to be submitted as evidence for this task.
To get a distinction:
You must ‘comprehensively explain financial issues and current market trends in the print-based
media industries with clear examples and consistent use of correct subject terminology’. You may
need additional sheets or you might use an electronic version of the workbook.
To get a pass:
You must ‘describe financial issues and current market trends in the print-based media industries with
some appropriate use of subject terminology’.

3. PROJECT BRIEF
Students Name
Project Title
Unit(s)
Finance and market trends
Understanding
Unit
Print Based
11
No
Industries
Tutor(s)
Dave Bakes
Assessment
In order to be assessed for this assignment you must complete the following work and
submit it by the required time. Below are the stages with the corresponding assessment
criteria as outlined in the unit specifications.
Task (s)
Grading Criteria
Pass
1
Merit
Distinction
P3 describe financial
issues and current
market trends in the
print-based media
industries with some
appropriate use of
subject terminology
M3 explain financial
issues and current
market trends in the
print-based media
industries with
reference to detailed
illustrative examples
and with generally
correct use of
subject terminology
D3 comprehensively
explain financial
issues and current
market trends in the
print based media
industries with
elucidated examples
and consistently using
subject terminology
correctly
Deadline/Schedule
The schedule is as follows:
Deadline for submission is 12pm on Monday the 14 th of October 2013

4. Describe 3 ways in which a print magazine makes money:
1) Advertisements- Advertising is a huge contributor to the income of
newspapers and magazines. Advertising is in most cases the largest income of
revenue for a magazine or newspaper. Advertisement revenue has been falling
in recent years due to the international credit crunch and the rise of internet
advertising. Publishers need to make sure they really understand who reads
their product so that they can include suitable advertisements and companies
are more likely to spend money advertising in their magazines or newspapers
2) Sponsorship- magazines will sometimes enter into a partnership deal with
another company. Companies will pay to receive advertising space in the
magazine, web advertisements and email shots etc. Companies will offer
different levels of sponsorship package. The more a company is willing to pay,
the more they will receive in terms of how much advertising space they will get.
3) Giveaways & competitions- sometimes publishers and companies will work
together on giveaways and competitions which will help to entice the customer
and promote both the magazine and the product. In competitions the income
received from the entries outweighs the cost of the prizes. This is another way
magazines can generate income.
Sources of expenditure: Explain these sources of expenditure with additional
examples.
Staffing:
Staffing takes up a large proportion of a company’s budget. An employee’s level of
skill, experience and market forces effect how much they will get paid, as well as the
importance of the company. Example of staffing for a newspaper would include
photographer to take and source images, journalists to write up the stories, layout
artists to decide the designs, editors to oversee and edit things the journalists have
produced.

5. Equipment hire: What sort of things might a company hire and why?
Companies sometimes hire equipment instead of buying it. This happens mostly with
large pieces of equipment, or things that they do not use as often as other things.
Examples of pieces of equipment a company may hire include; cars, photocopiers,
computers. Companies do this when it will cost more to buy than it does to hire.
Purchase and maintenance:
Companies will buy some of the equipment and then they must maintain it. Eventually
they will upgrade the equipment and the cost of all this falls under this category.
Material costs: What sort of materials might a print industry business need?
Companies involved in the print industry will have to buy materials such as paper, ink,
packaging etc. The cost of these fluctuates and companies must keep track of these
prices in order to accurately keep track of where they are financially.
Research and development: What type of things might companies do when
researching and why do they spend money on development?
One of the most important things for a company in the print industry is the target
audience for their product. They must be able to know what the customer wants and
how they can please them. Another reason they should know their target audience is
for advertising. Using their target audience they can select appropriate adverts and
get appropriate companies to advertise in their product, appealing to the customer
more. They spend money on development to change things such as the house style,
and branch out using different forms of media, from social networking sites and other
websites.

6. Marketing and promotion: How important is this to a company?
Marketing and promotion is very important to a company. It is the main way a
company advertise their product, and they will spend lots of money doing things such
as creating adverts for TV, creating print based adverts, creating website adverts etc.
Distribution: What different distribution methods could a publisher use? What
are some of the advantages and disadvantages of each?
Distribution is the way in which a company get their product to the consumer. They
can directly mail in the case of subscriptions, or send bulk orders to places such as
supermarkets or newsagents, to then be sold on.
Why should a company have a business model?
Having a business model helps a company identify their customer. This allows them to
target their customer more appropriately. It also allows a company to keep track of the
cost involved, who the company needs to work with and what the company is going to
have to do to make money..

7. What financial responsibilities could a company have?
Companies have many different financial responsibilities such as paying for supplies
and staff. Some companies may have investors that they are responsible for, and
PLC’s have shareholders, which they are responsible for.
Should a company prepare a budget and, if so, why?
A company should always prepare a budget. Preparing a budget is when a company
set the amount of money they want to spend on a project. They do this to help
manage costs and to help prevent spending to much money. It also gives them further
insight in to where the money is to spent and caan help manage departments. It could
also help show where there is more pressure financially and places they can maybe
cut cost.
Define costing and estimating:
Estimating is where someone has a calculated guess regarding things such as cost,
time, value etc. Costing is where someone estimates the cost of completing a project.
It is normally more accurate than a basic estimation.

8. What is a break-even analysis?
Break-even analysis is the process in which a company work out how much of their
product or service they need to sell to cover what it cost them. Once the break-even
point is passed all the money that they receive is profit.
What things could the vision of an organisation comprise of?
The vision of an organization could include things such as its long term goals, main
activities, core values, products and clients, aims, the way it approaches work etc.
Provide 3 examples of objectives and goals a magazine publisher might have
and why they might want them.
Some examples of the objectives or goals of a magazine publisher could include;
raising awareness of an issue e.g raising awareness on health issues.

9. Is having competition a good thing or a bad thing for a company? Look at
magazines competing in a similar market to help you with your response.
In some way competition is good in the way it pushes companies further to out do
their opponents, but overall I think it is a negative thing for said company. I think this
because if a company has no competition they can truly dominate the market with
ease. On the other hand it is a positive thing for the consumer as the product will be
better as competition drives quality.
What is a target audience? Find a media pack for a magazine of your choosing
and outline the audience for the magazine.
A target audience is the proposed group of people something is aimed at. A company
will model its product, services or advertisement around their target audience to make
it as relevant as possible.
Why do magazines want to know so much about their audiences? What do they
gain from it?
Magazines want to know as much as possible about their audience so that they can
base the content on the audience more accurately. In turn this makes the magazine
more effective and makes the magazine of a much higher quality in the eyes of the
audience.
Define the term convergence and give an example of it.
Convergence is when two or more different technologies come together. An example
of this in the print based media industry would be magazine or newspapers having a
digital copy, available via the internet, as well as a paper copy.

10. What is diversification? Provide examples of a diverse media producer and their
products.
Diversification is a term used to describe the process of an organisation widening their
range of products or services. An example of a diverse media producer would be
Kerrang! Magazine. They have a radio, magazine, tv channel and a tour.
What is internationalisation? Provide examples of a international media
producers and the products they make.
Internationalisation is when something is made internationally available, i.e you can
get it in many different countries. An example of an international media product is
vogue magazine, the magazine is produced in several different countries but adapted
to suit the specific country, for example the French version is different to the English
version to suit the culture.