Overview of Magazine Industry

The magazine industry creates, or at least exaggerates, the stories that go around in everyday societies. The 8000+ titles that are published in Britain form the basis of the consumers' beliefs, values and ideologies; these magazines either conform to the ideas behind society or create them.
The biggest magazine publishers are Bauer, IPC, BBC Magazines and National Magazines. Between these publishers they sell 1.4 billion magazines a year to the 85% of our population that buys and reads them. £745 million is spent by advertisers on magazines and consumers spend £2 billion on these magazines every year. The magazine industry is built up in categories: the most popular and common category is consumer. These consumer magazines are the ones that are available in newsagents and online and they contain either general or specialist articles (Gardener's World, Total Film, Loaded, Elle). There are business / trade magazines that are sold to people in the work place, customer magazines (a form of advertising), staff magazines, newspaper supplements, part works and academic journals. In the UK there are more than 3,200 consumer magazine titles alone. For the past decade there has been an average of 500 new magazines a year however, only 3 in 10 of them survive for more than 4 years.
Magazines become successful if they pick up and recreate the spirit and hype of the time in which they are being created. Every magazine and media product is born from a certain cultural context however some are there to challenge the more dominant ideologies in society, whereas others just reinforce them.