20 - Niche Magazines & Circulation

Broadcast VS Narrowcast


In the industry there are two types of target audiences. These a mass market being broadcast and a niche market being the narrowcast. Mass market is where there is a mass target audience that focuses on a wide variety of people with different purposes where as niche is the narrowcast. Narrowcast is where it focuses on a specific target audience that are very specific on what they want to gain from the magazines. 


Niche Magazines
Pros
Niche magazines have pros and cons when focusing on the narrowcast. Firstly, the content is far more specific to what the reader wants rather than a wide variety of people it becomes more narrow and only the people that want to read certain things buy it. An example of this is people that are interested in rock, but what a more specific based topic in rock, eg. heavy metal. This differs from broadcast because it would just focus on the wider base and discuss many different aspects of rock. 


Customers are loyal to the magazine due to the smaller fan base they stay with it and don't differ to other magazines. There is a far smaller fan base and target audience so niche magazines rely on the loyal fans they do have to ensure they carry on producing magazines.


The loyalty helps the magazine massively but for other reasons. Another reason is that if the magazine back a new band, the majority of loyal fans will also back the new band. By combining this and advertising from the record label, this will enable the band to grow quickly resulting in it, most probably becoming massive. This is down to the minority becoming the majority. To begin with the small target audience will support it and then hopefully it will continue to grow. 


Cons
Due to there obviously being far less people buying the magazine and being interested due to the more specific audience there will be far less money generated from the sales of the magazine. This means that there is far more chance of the magazine being less successful and there being stopped circulation. 


The smaller target audience will also effect advertising in the magazine. Advertisers will not be so inclined to pay money for it as it will be less successful than doing it in the broadcast magazines. As I researched and saw that in magazines such as NME the advertising is a massive part of it. 




Example of Broadcast and ABCS

Kerrang is a massive production in the music genre so is broadcast because it has a large subject audience. It began as a Niche magazine but as the genre grew and the minority began the majority it became broadcast rather than narrowcast. This magazine looks very professional and more expensive. 


Bauer Consumer Media produces the magazine and is uses economies of scale. This is when companies print niche magazines targeting narrowcast subject audiences along side the broadcast magazines they're producing also. This means the overall cost of production is cheaper because they are already printing magazines. 


Bauer Consumer Media portray vertical integration as it reaches over 90 million adults in the UK across multiple media channels including over 80 radio and TV stations. These include KISS and 4Music. This is vertical integration and improves the sales of the magazine because the genre will gain more playback and gain more of an audience and interest increasing interest in the magazine. 


Even though this magazine is a broadcast magazine. Kerrangs sales are decreased -2.1% indicating that even the successful magazines are also suffering due to the state of theeconomic climate at the moment. Due to the demographic being between 14-30 year olds, this means they have more disposable income, however, it comes from part time jobs and jobs. Due to everything increasing in prices, they will be less inclined to buy the magazine as they have to pay for other things to pay for. These include festival tickets, due to the prices increasing, they would probably prefer to buy tickets than the magazine. This is also due to the fact they can get the information by using other sources of media. For example, the internet. This is one of the main reasons why magazine sales are also suffering. 


Example of Niche

Here is an example of niche magazine. Beautiful Kitchens is a magazine that is based on kitchen designs and home designs. This shows that it has a far smaller demographic because the main aspect is kitchens. People may be interested in house designs but the magazine is majority based on kitchens so if they don't want to know about just kitchens they won't purchase the magazine. 


The magazine is obviously a narrowcast magazine and this is a prime example of how much they rely on their loyal audience and how easy it is for niche magazines sales to decrease. This is shown by the -19.5% decrease. 


However, this once again shows the economies of scale. Beautiful Kitchens is produced by IPC Media. These are a massive company as well as also produce many different magazines, niche and broadcast. They also have a lot of vertical integration as they have control over many different areas of the media. These include, IPC Newspaper, IPC Magazines, IPC Trade and Technical, IPC Printing, and IPC New Products. This shows that even though there has been a decrease in this magazine, due to gaining vertical integration, this means that they are able to keep control and keep the power the have in the media. 


Although, this is not the case for every small niche magazine and sometimes the decrease in sales often means a stop age in circulation.