What kind of institution might distribute your media product and why?
There are four main magazine publishing companies in the UK. The first of which is IPC media. They are probably one of the largest publishers and publish a high variety of magazines from music, men’s interest, fashion, TV guides and many more. They publish many well known magazines such as Nuts and TV and Satellite. They are the publishers of NME music magazine which is the magazine that is most similar to my publication ‘Unplugged’. This is due to the music genre of the magazine and targeted audience. Therefore I won’t be using IPC to publish my magazine as they would not want to damage their existing publication to this target audience. They also don’t need another publication to target the Indi-rock scene as they already have some.
The next publisher is Bauer Consumer Media. They are a worldwide publishing and media company. The Bauer Publishing Group comprises 282 magazines worldwide in 15 countries. Bauer started in the UK with the launch of Bella magazine in 1987. Bauer further expanded in the UK with the purchase of EMap Consumer Media in 2008. Bauer are responsible for publishing several mass market popular magazines, including: Bella, Take a Break, Empire and TV Quick. They also publish Q magazine. This is a very broad genre music magazine. Although the target audience and genre is allot broader than NME it still features allot of similar content and therefore this to would be a bad publishes choice due to a clash of interests. They also publish a Metal/Rock magazine named Kerrang which would also eat into the more rock side of my genre.
The final two magazine publishers are the National Magazine Company and Conde Nast. The National Magazine Company is one of the most established consumer magazine publishers in the UK, reaching 14.9 million adults every year. National Magazines currently publish 20 magazines in the UK including Good Housekeeping, Country Living, Harper's Bazaar, Esquire and Cosmopolitan. However Condé Nast is a worldwide magazine publishing company that are responsible for publishing some of the world’s most popular lifestyle magazines. They are responsible for some of the largest known fashion and lifestyle publications on the market, including: Vogue, Teen Vogue, GQ, and Easy Living.
I have decided to have Conde Nast publish my magazine over the National Magazine Company. A Key reason for this decision is due to the fact that Conde Nast is an international whereas National Magazine Company is not. This allows me to sell my magazine throughout Europe and the USA as well as Great Britain as I intended. This will give me a larger audience and more consumers.
