The History of IPC – Media Task 4

1. What Types Of Magazine And Target Audiences Has IPC Been Associated With Over The Years?

After IPC’s first magazine, a newspaper named The Field, it was clear that their second idea was to appeal to a variety of highly specific, yet popular magazines. All of these were commonly associated, (at the time) with the Middle/Upper Class, and featured magazines about things such as yachting, shooting, gardening, cycling and photography.Their second idea aimed to focus on the large and very competitive Middle-Aged Women market, with ‘Woman’s Weekly’. They later created ‘Woman and Home’, ‘Idea and Home’, ‘Home and Gardens’, ‘Woman’s Own’ and ‘Woman. All of which were designed to clinch the demographic that buys the most magazines: Women. The second largest magazine market was music, and thus New Musical Express, or later, NME, was born. It created the first ever official UK record chart, which makes it a flagship music magazine brand and a pioneer in its market. They also created the TV Times, which attracted a large audiences purely for it’s usefulness, as it was the first magazine to record TV listings.

2. Why Might IPC Be An Appropriate Publisher For A New Music Magazine? What Sorts Of Genres Of Music/Types Of Magazines Might They Be Likely To Publish? Why Might Alternative Publishers Be More Appropriate?

IPC is a huge company, but in order to create a new magazine it would have to focus more on non-Mainstream genres, such as heavy metal or alternative music. This is because they don’t want to create a magazine that does the same as their other music magazine, NME does, as it would just be a waste of money. However, IPC has a massive amount of prestige, meaning that it would be able to give new and less popular music a hug platform, and could help to unearth unsigned and unorthodox talent. Alternative magazine companies may be better still, as they could create what they wanted as a rival to NME, but there is a problem of the faith of NME’s readership, will they move for a new magazine? This is why, if they did create a magazine, they’d have to provide something innovative and different that would attract an audience, such as unsigned music.

By Daniel O’Riordan.