Masum Qahar

What types of magazines and target audience has IPC been associated with over the years?
IPC was launched in 1853 and it started as a newspaper which talked about topics such as the Crimean War and the Charge of the Light Brigade. Some of the magazines which were published in the 1800s were; Country Life, Horse & Hound, Shooting Times, Yachting world, Amateur Gardening, Cycling Weekly, Amateur Photographer and the Railway Magazine. They published magazines with a range of different genres which shows they tried to appeal to many different target audiences but the majority of the magazines published were about peoples hobbies which may have attracted the audiences to buy the magazines. The selling point of the magazines back then was the competitions they had associated with the magazine with a 1 a week prize. In the early 1900s they launched three new magazines; Yachting Monthly, Cage Birds, Golf Monthly and Motor Boat, these are also magazines about hobbies to attract the same target audiences and also attract more customers. They also opened four weekly magazines for women such as Womans Weekly which attracted more women to buy the magazines and attracted more costumers. There was another magazine called Homes & Gardens which had features about how to use a washing machine which was like a manual for housewives to help them with housework. In the early 1900s they launched many womens magazines to attract the female audience to buy the magazine. During the second World War in the 1940s these womens magazines gave information about their partners at War on behalf of the government which attracted them to buy is as many families were worried and these magazines gave them an idea of how their partners were doing. In the 1950s they started to release music magazines as the music scene began to light up. 1952 was the arrival of New Musical Express and NME which targeted different audiences as music became popular and these were the first magazines about music. Also in 1955 they created TV Times which was like a TV guide listing all the programs coming on TV. This attracted the teens or young adults as they were more interested in TV. The three publishers then came together in 1963 (George Newnes, Oldhams Press and Fleetway Publications) to actually form IPC and all these earlier magazines all became part of IPC (International Publishing Corporation). Then in 1969 they created Shoot which was a magazine about football which started become really popular, this magazine targeted males as they may be working and miss the football action this will update them on the events during the week. They also made sports magazine on other sports to target those that did not like football to gain more customers. In the 1970s they released three more successful magazines along with all the others; Aeroplane Monthly, Sporting Gun, SuperBike which attracted more of the male audience. Also they formed the giant global corporation Reed International so these years were very successful for the company.

Masum Qahar

Then in 1980s they formed European Magazines LTD to expand the company all over Europe to gain many more customers. Then to help celebrate the company they created the IPC Editorial Awards which was an event to reward the editors of the magazines. They continued the issues of the previous magazines and targeted the same people and the most successful magazine editors got the awards. In the 1990s they created another TV guide Whats on TV which gave the audience an idea of what was on TV and became the UKs best-selling magazine as technology had now moved forward and there was practically a TV in every house. For the men they published Loaded which was to meet their sexual needs. The womans weeklies sold even more as they gave women a break from their everyday housewife role. NME became the biggest music magazine and is even a best-selling magazine today. It was then sold for 860M to Cinven in 1998 and since then formed five limited companies; IPC Connect, IPC SouthBank, IPC tx, IPC ignite and IPC Country & Leisure Media, as these focused on the different genres of magazines and it made it easier to focus on one particular target audience. In 2000 it was renamed to IPC Media. It was then brought by Time Inc. for a huge 1.15billion. The magazine Nuts was the worlds first mens weekly in 2004 and was the biggest launch is IPCs history.
Overall IPC published magazines targeting men to start with, it then moved on to niche magazines which are the magazine about specific topics or hobbies which each magazine had a small fixed target audience. After that they decided to target women so that they could reach out to every type of target audience possible. In more recent years they have had NME magazine which is considered as the biggest music magazine.

Why might IPC be an appropriate publisher for a new magazine?

It is a well-known publisher therefore it would attract the target audience as they will know the publisher and would associate it with all the successful magazines they have published. Therefore by using the same publisher the magazine may sell more. Also IPC Media havent really focused on publishing music magazines so this may be the time they try to get more music magazines out there therefore they may focus on the new music magazine so that they could make it a big magazine and reach to the genre of musics target audience to make the publisher an even bigger publisher than it already is.

Masum Qahar

What sorts of genres of music/types of magazines might they be likely to publish?

IPC have only published two music magazine and they are more general music magazines that do not focus on one genre. Also these magazines target the older audience so they may continue to only target this target audience as they know the audience and know what they would want. However they have demonstrated that they are an open publisher as they started targeting men, then niche magazines, then womens weeklies therefore they could target any audience with another niche magazine about the particular genre of music. However they may not be the best publisher to use for a music magazine as they do not really know the market as they have not really created many music magazines therefore may not really understand what the target audience would want in the magazine and it may be hard to sell.

Why might alternative publishers like Bauer be appropriate?

Bauer publisher is a publisher more focused on music therefore they will know what types of music magazines will sell which will be good for the editor of the magazine as this publisher can help them attract a bigger target audience to ensure the magazine sells more. Also they publish the magazine Kerrang which is one of the most popular rock magazines sold. They have not created a hip hop magazine as off yet therefore it may be the best time as they will focus on that magazine and use their experience to ensure it sells. They also have a lot of experience on music magazine which will enable to industry the industry which may make it easier to sell the magazine. However if the choice was given I would not choose Bauer as they may choose not to focus on my magazine as they already focus on so many.

XXL Magazine
XXL magazine is published by Harris Publications. Harris Publications was founded in 1971. It was founded by Stanley R. Harris. Stanley was in the magazine publishing business since the 1950s. It was more generally a comic book publisher and was known as Harris Comics and published magazines such as; Cain, Chains of Chaos, Creepy, The Rook, Vampirella and many others. Harris Publications is not really seen as a big publishing company for music magazines as its history has focused more on comics and the founder was fond of these types of magazines. It has only ever produced 5 music magazines and only still publishes two therefore it is a little like IPC as both publishers do not really focus on music magazines. The magazine published music magazines such as; Guitar World, Revolver, Scratch, XXL and Elektro. XXL magazine and Elektro are the only two that the company still published as some were sold to other publishers. XXL magazine focuses mainly on hip hop music. The artists that may feature on it are; Dr Dre, Eminem, Kayne West, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, etc.

Masum Qahar

Therefore if a new editor was trying to publish a new music magazine I would not really recommend Harris Publications as it is not really a focused music magazine publisher and they may not be known to the audience of music. However Harris Publications may be likely to focus on a music magazine on a genre like hip hop as they would like to target that audience to gain more customers.