Researching Magazine Publishing Companies

Bauer

The Bauer Media Group (Bauer Verlagsgruppe), better known as Bauer is a German media publishing company. They are based in Hamburg, and operate in 15 different countries.

Websites: http://www.bauer.co.uk/ , http://www.bauermedia.co.uk/ , http://www.bauermedia.com/ , http://www.bauerverlag.de/

They are a private publishing company, which operates in many first world countries such as the United Kingdom & the United States. Bauer is the largest privately owned publishing company in Europe. Bauer produces magazines such as Bella, Take a Break, TV Choice and puzzle magazines. These types of magazines are targeted at middle classed women, because of the femininity in the magazine. So this company’s target audience are middle classed women. Bauer are a mainstream company due to their magazines being very much popular. The brand image is basically calm and warm because people from the feminine demographic are usually stereotypically calm and loving. Q and Kerrang are part of Bauer media brands which are a completely different theme from the common magazines they publish, as well as having a completely different target audience. There are links between production of magazines and other media, they have various different types of media such as Bauer radio, and they also have 50% stake in the British television company Box Television, the other half owned by Channel 4.

IPC Media

IPC Media is a British media production company. They were previously known as International Publishing Corporation. They are owned by a subsidiary of Time Inc.

Websites: http://www.ipcmedia.com/

IPC media is commonly known as a mainstream publisher. IPC Media produce over 85 iconic media brands. IPC Media's print based media reaches roughly two thirds of UK women and 44% of UK men. That is almost 27 million of the United Kingdom’s adult demographic, whilst IPC media’s digital based media reaches over 20 million users. IPC Media groups its current titles under five magazine divisions: Connect (women's weeklies such as Now Magazine and Look), Inspire (leisure and specialist), Ignite! (Men’s lifestyle and entertainment), Southbank (women's lifestyle and home interest), and TX (portfolio of television titles). In addition there are: Ideal Home; and Market force, the UK's leading magazine distribution business.
IPC Media's magazines are multi-demographical so they publish for many social societies and both genders. Magazines aimed at men are ones such as Rugby world, nuts and NME. Whilst their magazines targeted at the female demographic are magazines such as Look and Now magazines.IPC Media own TV entertainment brands such as what’s on TV& TV times which are targeted at both demographics.

BBC Magazines

BBC Magazines is the magazine publishing division of BBC Worldwide, the commercial subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Websites: http://www.bbcmagazines.com/

The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) produces several mainstream magazines due to the fact that they produce several successful programmes which are then given magazines such as Top Gear and Top of the pops. They cater to both genders, so there is no specific target audience for the companies, but there may be target audiences for individual magazines. The trend or style of these magazines are that they all use a variety of colours which are done to attract the eyes of the audience, as well as making the magazines stand out. BBC has a variety of radio stations, which cater to various people from various different tastes of music. BBC also has many channels which show many Soap Operas about Working Class people but they also show televisions shows for people of various tastes.

Development Hell

Websites: http://developmenthell.co.uk/

Development hell is a magazine publishing company, they are a Niche company as and they target the underground, so the magazines they sell will not be sold in many shops, and will be hard to find. If you want magazines produced by development hell you may have to go to specialist shops such as in Soho who cater to people who work in media would buy the magazine. There target audience would be for both genders, so they cater to both demographics. They have a habit of constantly using black and bold font.

Proposal

I have chosen the main genre for my magazine to be R&B, but since some artists fall into more than one genre I will also involve hip-hop and rap into my magazine. R&B seems to be a popular around my environment in which I live,and also a large majority of artists who have the most followers on twitter are R&B artists, so I know my target audience out there will be large and easier to attract. The target audience for my magazine will be mostly multi-gender, both females and males from the ages of 14-21 because they are commonly the people at that age tend to listen to that type of music, because it is the music of the urban. I believe my magazine needs to be enlisted into the market, because R&B market do have a large fan base, but have not had an successful run, and I believe I am going to do that with my magazine.

Analysis of Contents page

Within this magazine they use a vast range of images, and this is usually done so that the magazine can get their point across. They use their images to target many different people from those who are more intellectual, as well as those who are more visual based. The images they use in the beginning and mainly in the contents page are done to foreshadow what the magazine is going to talk about, the images they also use focus more on the emotion and the posture of the people being featured in the magazine. In the second part of the content page they arrange the image in such a way that it is showing level of importance. Initially they put an image of Cheryl Cole’s magazine cover ahead of every other image to show that it a key subject and so is Cheryl Cole, the images that go after them go down in importance. This contents page is a double spread and the first part of the contents page is Cheryl Cole standing boldly and seductively in a seductive outfit, while there are other smaller images of the people featured in the magazine. This is done to make her look more edgy and extreme, and even dangerous to an extent, it is possible that the other people featured are a reference to backup members as well as less important.

The images support my initial findings about the style of the magazine and its intended audience, because they use a variety of images which are serious and dark, for example they use images of rock bands as well as, rock divas which show that they have a clear target audience of rock listeners. They have an image of someone who has a suit on, which backs my theory that the readers of Q are intellectual ones also. An amount of ten images are actually used, and this is done to give the reader a clear visual as well as a taster of what the magazine has to offer. Also by featuring Cheryl Cole they are broadening the audience of their magazine by choosing someone from a pop genre to feature in there rock dominant magazine.

The colours that are mainly used on the contents pages are black, white and red, which are colours which have a variety of connotations, for example red could signify passion, love and anger that the magazine has for what they do. The styles of text used within this contents page are Serif and Sans Serif. Serif is the letters which are the letters which have flickers on the end of letters, whilst sans serif is evidently the one without the flickers. The colours used support the style of the front cover because they only incorporate three colours which are black, white and red, although the roles of black and white are reversed. On the front cover black is the more dominant colour, while on the contents page white is more dominant, they’re roles are reversed. This magazine uses a housing effect by always using black, red and white.

They organise the information so that it is segregated from the images. It is clearly at the sides so that it is easily accessible to the audience. They put it to the size and much smaller than the image because it seems that it is their belief that the images currently have a greater importance and appeal to the audience than the text actually does. They have two different sections for the information, one of which are the articles and features, and the other which is the regulars, the sections which are less serious and interact more with the reader. This actually tells me that the magazine think about various different aspects, as well as thinking about the benefit and issues of the actual readers.
They have promotional features to boost the income of the magazine, and the products that they are promoting. The only promotion that I could see so far is one for that months essential tunes. This is creating a bigger buzz for the songs as well as promotiing them.

This magazine logo is placed on the four corners of the contents page to imprint thier logo within the minds of thier readers, so that it is easialy memorable and recognizable. The logos are not as large as the images, but they are greatly dominant because of the amount of them. Q has franchises which consist of a television channel as well as a radio station. Q TV is a UK tv channel which was created in 2000, and branched off the Q magazine, it is only available on satelite and cable. Q Radio is an online and DTV radio station, broadcasting on digital television across the UK and online, it was released in 2008. The radio station and television channel are not promoted on the contents page.

Analysing Articles Cheryl Cole

The artist chosen for this article is Cheryl Cole, the thing that is signified is that she seems to be wearing a black and very much dark costume, which suggests that the genre she’s from ma y be a dark genre, or something that is not soft. The magazine is Q, traditionally Q is a rock magazine, and as we look deeper into the article and read much more we realise that she is a rock artist. So she is arguably a rock artist who ventures into other genres, as she is in a pop band. I believe the target audience will be rock listeners, and since she is wearing what seems to be a promiscuous outfit, the target audience will consist mainly of the male gender. The target audience may also consist of the female gender because; she may be seen as a role model for them.

The language this magazine uses Standard English, and is starved of colloquial language; this may indicate to us that the target audience are educated, and understand high vocabulary to a standard, and example of this is when the words “credibility”, “infidelities” and “turbulence”, which are words that would need prior knowledge to understand. It shows that they understand that their target audience are intelligent. The language appeals to the audience because it adds a sense of excitement to it, while it uses words such as “turbulence”. This magazine and other rock magazines seem to break stereotypes that people associated, and/or who listen to the rock genre are less educated, by using many different forms of formal language. You would expect the magazine to use informal and colloquial language, but it chooses informal to highlight the intelligence that lies beneath the average rock listener. The ideology of rock artists and listeners are not portrayed when it comes to the language that is used within this article and magazine.

The type of tone that the magazine chooses to address the reader as is an intelligent and informed fan, the reason for this is that it rarely uses colloquial language, unless it is a quote from Cheryl Cole. They have constructed this article in a way that they communicate with a wider range of audience. We see evidence that the reader is seen as an intelligent and informed fan because the author scripts “At one point she had the UK’S top single, album and TV show”, which signifies that the audience were key in the growth of Cheryl Coles’s success and popularity. It shows us that the audience is not like a friend, because they are not speaking directly to the audience, they are making statements about the career and life of the artist.

The style of text used within this article is Serif throughout it all. Serif fonts have flickers on the en d of the letters. All the sizes and colours of the letters are the same, apart from a select few. They have used illuminated lettering at the beginning of the two paragraphs, and coincidently they were both the letter ‘C’. The illuminated lettering was done to attract the attention of the reader. Illuminated letters are constructed to give us a powerful and exciting introduction to the paragraph. They also highlight a phrase, and the main illuminated letter in red. The reason why the colours are in red is because it is trying to signify the importance of the lettering. Red is one of the colours the eyes are most attracted to, so it attracts the reader’s attention to the quote which is interesting, thus making them want to read more. Red is a colour that signifies passion, love & evil, so the audience may unintentionally begin making connotations for the lettering, which makes them want to read on more.

The way the page is laid out is quite unique, because the page consists mainly of writing, and roughly 20% of the page is the image of Cheryl Cole. The image is actually a medium shot of Cheryl Cole. It is evident that the main focus of this article was mainly the text, which makes us believe that target audience are an intellectual one. This reflects to the target audience in a positive light because it signifies their intelligence, and it shows that the magazine values the literature side more than the images.

Cheryl Cole is being presented as a seductive, dark and mysterious due to her posture and the composition of the image. The image of Cheryl Cole bares resemblance to the Sin City movie and posters, which could possibly be indicating to us that she has been sinning or being very seductive. The colours black often signify many things such as darkness, rock and sin, which could be referring to the magazine, as Q is a rock magazine. Cheryl is also wearing what seems to be revealing and tight clothes, which could possibly be referring to the risks that rock artists usually, take. The meaning is anchored through the heading “I don’t know what I look like any more, do you know what I mean.” which is telling us that she is becoming something that she wasn’t. The image shows someone different to the original Cheryl Cole, it shows a different side to her possibly her dark side.

The front cover aswell as the magazine and this article are very similar to eachother. The front cover uses black, red and white which highlight the theme of the magazine which is dark and rock. They use a majority of black to highlight the darkness of the magazine. The whole of the magazine seems to use the colours of red, red, black and white which seems to be a housing effect, throughout the whole of the magazine. White and black are two contrasting colours which highlight the light and darkness of the artist and the magazine. The red used highlights the passion that is put into rock, aswell as the passion and love that Cheryl Cole has.

I believe that this article is very good because it does not require prior knowledge, because within the article it gives you facts and information about Cheryl Cole. We see examples of these when the writer scripts “At one point she had the UK’S top single, album and TV show”, this alone gives us general information about the success of this figure, telling us that she is quite triumphant in the British television and music industry. So it is evident no prior knowledge is needed about this artist.