Target Audience

>From this data from http://www.nrs.co.uk/ we can see that Top of the Pops magazine is more popular with C2DE with 170,000 readers, C2DE are socio-economic classifications which include people who are skilled, semi and unskilled manual workers, the unemployed, pensioners and students. 139,000 readers are in the 15-44 category which is most likely due to teenagers being interested in the magazine and the older end of the age group being the ones who buy the magazine most probably for their child. There are only 47,000 male readers of this magazine compared to 122,000 female readers. This shows that this magazine is a lot more popular with the female audience, we can see just by the front covers that it would appeal to them more for obvious reasons. The male audience to this magazine could even be the ones that are the older end of the age group buying it for their child so this doesn’t give a clear/accurate explanation. However we can look investigate into other areas such as articles and quotes to get a clearer idea.

I took the initiative to go onto the TOTP website and found that this magazine is published monthly for £2.20 this is something that I will need to take into consideration when making my magazine. I also looked to find a way of contacting them to ask about their target audience and see what they say. Here is what I said below. I have explained that I am at Sussex Downs College and that this is for my media coursework. Here is the answer I received. This reinforces my statement above about young teens and their parents who buy the magazines.

Another magazine I want to look at is Smash Hits, this was a very popular Pop magazine in the 1980's. However, unfortunately it folded in 2006 but has continued with a music channel. I have looked at other data to find out who this magazine was aimed for. When I looked on Wikipedia it stated that it was "aimed at teens and young adults" and that it was a fortnightly magazine. This is different to the comparative magazine that I am looking at, the differences between these magazines make me think why this one folded whereas Top of The Pops is still going.

I found an article on the BBC website (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4673136.stm), which said that it was "essential reading for teenagers during its peak in the 1980's" this backs up Wikipedia's statement which means that we can definitely say that this is a magazine that was targeted at the teenage audience but was in its prime decades ago. Another quote I found within an article written in 2006 mentioned that "Today, Smash Hits is a lost cause that has somehow contrived to shed 840,000 readers in the past 17 years." (http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2006/feb/03/pressandpublishing.popandrock) this shows that in the peak years of this magazine there were about as many readers as there are for Top of The Pops today.

All of this is similar to the data that was found on NRS for Top of The Pops magazine. This shows that this is the vital target audience for this type of magazine and I will need to take this into account when constructing my magazine and making sure that it has characteristics of those above.