Unit 13/15 A01: Publisher Research TASK TWO The two publishers that I will be investigating as part of my research will be Northcliffe Media (owned by the Daily Mirror General Trust [DMGT]) and Future PLC. The two publications that I will specifically be looking at are: The Herald, a local newspaper which is published by Northcliffe Media – owned by the DMGT and T3, a magazine published by Future PLC.
Figure 1
The types of publication that Northcliffe Media publish are local newspapers and magazines, confined to the UK. In fact, the company publishes 23 publications in the South West alone, extending to 34 in the South East and 39 in the Midlands and Northern regions of the country. Whilst The Herald is the one that I will be looking into more specifically, it is worth noting that the company also publishes ‘The Cornishman’, ‘The Extra’, ‘The Cornish Guardian’, ‘The Western Morning News’, ‘Cornwall Today’ and ‘Brides in Cornwall’. The circulation area for The Herald is displayed in figure 1; the circulation areas for local publications are so small purely because both the interest of the stories published wouldn’t extend to areas where the news is not relevant and the cost to report relevant stories outside of the circulation area would be too high for the paper to survive. The readership for Northcliffe Media’s publications is generally middle aged or elderly males living in mid-sized towns and cities. They are middle-upper class (BC1C2) and buy the newspaper just to read about what is happening around their area, they’ll watch and listen to local radio stations and local news or programming (BBC 1 South West).There is arguably a lot of money to be made in local newspapers as the local population seem to value local news more than national news, more so when buying a newspaper – people can watch the national news in detail on TV in the morning, lunchtime, afternoon or evening; people cannot watch local news in detail however. The turnover of Northcliffe Media is £261m1, this makes up 15% of the overall revenue of the DMGT, and the figure averages out to £2.7m per publication which shows there is still a market for local papers.
1 DMGT. (2010). DMGT At a Glance. Available: http://www.dmgtreports.com/2010/Overview/Group-at-aGlance.php. Last accessed 9th Mar 2012.
The Herald, published in Plymouth, has a circulation of 30,323 and a readership of 106,660 – the amount of readers per copy is 3.2. This is impressive for the newspaper; however the editor has expressed concerns at the amount of young people not reading newspapers. The audience profile for The Herald is a male C2 admin office worker, in his 40s, earning £26k, married with two or three children – the individual is family orientated and is very interested in family holidays and also consumes media such as Radio Plymouth, Heart FM and The Extra. Please see figure 2 for official figures from Northcliffe Media.
Figure 2 2
This is the Readership Profile of The Herald, against the Readership Profile of Western Morning News (WMN) – a sister paper operating from the same offices. WMN has a much larger distribution area, covering all of Devon and Cornwall as well as the majority of North Somerset, Somerset and Dorset; essentially the whole of the South West region. The diagram shows that an almost equal amount of males and females read both publications, however what is interesting is the amount of people who read The Herald over the ages. The Herald seems to attract a younger audience, which is surprising as the rise of Mobile Technology and the ability to see news via social networks faster than a newspaper the next day is a threat to the industry as we know it. The WMN has two spikes in readership age-wise, readers aged 55-64 and 75+, and this suggests that the articles in the WMN concern issues that appeal to older readers, perhaps even the writing style is more in-depth and more of a concentration-intensive read. When one looks at the socio-economical aspect of the profile, it’s surprising to see that the ABC1 classes contribute to almost 50% of the readership; the main AB classes are more out in the sticks and would be stereotypically interested in newspapers aimed at a higher audience than The Herald. The city mainly consists of C1C2DE classes; this is demonstrated by the amount of ABC1 readers for the WMN, 56%, this is because the circulation area is so much more bigger, the South West is home to a lot of the AB people of Britain. Nonetheless, this shows that Northcliffe Media have publications targeting all demographics with different local newspapers which are a very efficient business model finance-wise.
2 Slide taken from Guest Lecture; by Bill Martin - Editor of The Herald.
Future plc has a very large amount of publications across the magazine market; however all of the publications are niche. By looking at figure 4, you can see the vast array of magazines published, they have their proverbial fingers in all of the niche pies. They have magazines specialising in sport, technology, gaming, craft, automobile, digital creative, film and music. They don’t, however, stop at one magazine – they cater for every niche within that market – as an example for the Craft genre, they have the following magazines: Your Family Tree, PaperCraft Inspirations, The Knitter, Simply Knitting, Cross Stitch Collections, Cross Stitcher & Mollie Makes – they cover the entire market of craft, the same applies for every other magazine niche they are publishing. However, not only does Future publish, they also have an events section of the company – they run events directly associated with their publications, festivals and awards as well as music events. This company is incredibly diverse in what they do; the Golden Joystick Awards are highly regarded in the UK Gaming Industry. It’s a very clever business model; events bring in a lot of money to the business which can be spent on the publications to be better quality than other competing magazines – specifically in the technology, games and film genre. Future sells 2.9m3 copies of their magazines a month, they have started to go into releasing digital copies of their magazine – they release T3, their main technology magazine, on the iPad and online, this is an example of how publishers are starting to combat the decline in sales of newspapers. The revenue from their publications during the financial year of 2010-11 was £125.5m, the advantage that the company has is that it has a strong link with game industry leaders such as Sony and Microsoft; they produce the official magazines for Xbox 360 and PlayStation. The typical customer of Future is a male aged mid 20s – late 30s, he’s in the C1C2 class – the reason that he’s not in the D class is because he has a lot of disposable income. He’s either single or in a stable relationship, he lives in or around a city in an apartment. He’ll listen to BBC Radio 1, Kiss or Kerrang and watch BBC Three, he’ll be interested in the internet and current affairs. He’ll have the latest smart phone and computer as well as being well up-to-date with the latest gaming titles. If he wants to buy anything technological, he’ll spend as much as he can to get the best he can. By having this audience, the company can create a relationship between themselves and the buyer as well as establishing loyalty through having cross-promotions. Their target audience is interested in a range of magazines perhaps not just in the same genre. For instance, the male could be interested primarily in gaming so buys the Xbox 360 Official Magazine; however he’s also interested in technology and film so buys T3 and Total Film. This can be encouraged by doing special promotions such as buying a 3 magazine subscription for less money.
3 http://mos.futurenet.com/digital/futureplc/Future_AnRep11.pdf
The circulation of T3 is 60,1274, this is just print-based, and the magazine sells a shed-load of copies online in various digital formats. It is distributed all over the UK as well as being translated into various different languages for sale internationally.
4 http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=43071
Diagram of the structure of Daily Mirror General Trust (Fig 3)
Diagram of the structure of Future PLC (Fig 4)