Industries and Audiences Revision

Below are 17 questions designed to focus your revision for Section B of the examination.                                                                                                                                                 

1.       For what main purpose do industries publish magazines?

2.       Name some of the main magazine publishers and some of the titles they publish.

3.       Do these industries work at a national or global level? How do you know?

4.       Do these industries only publish magazines or are they involved with other media or wider industry?

5.       Find examples of vertical and horizontal integration.

6.       What do you understand by the term synergy? Give an example.

7.       What new technologies have been introduced into the magazine industry?

8.       What are the new ways in which audiences can consume magazines?

9.       What do you understand by the term technological convergence?

10.   What are the implications of these new patterns of consumption for both audiences and industries? Try and answer the question with reference to your own consumption of magazines.

11.   How do magazines make money?

12.   How will new patterns of magazine consumption affect the profit margins for the magazine industry? Give a positive and a negative with reference to a real example?

13.   What do we mean by dumbing-down? Why might magazines have to do this?

14.   In class we have identified 6 threats to the magazine industry. What are they?

15.   What is web 2.0 technology? How is this being used by the magazine industry?

16.   How are audience figures measured and by whom?

17.   How are readership figures measured and by whom?

Listed here are possible the areas of learning that the examination question will focus on

Candidates should be prepared to understand and discuss the processes of production, distribution, marketing and exchange as they relate to contemporary media institutions, as well as the nature of audience consumption and the relationships between audiences and institutions. In addition, candidates should be familiar with:

·         the issues raised by media ownership in contemporary media practice;

·         the importance of cross media convergence and synergy in production, distribution and marketing;

·         the technologies that have been introduced in recent years at the levels of production, distribution, marketing and exchange;

·         the significance of proliferation in hardware and content for institutions and audiences;

·         the importance of technological convergence for institutions and audiences;

·         the issues raised in the targeting of national and local audiences (specifically, British) by international or global institutions;

·         the ways in which the candidates’ own experiences of media consumption illustrate wider patterns and trends of audience behaviour.

A study of a successful magazine within the contemporary British magazine market, including its patterns of production, distribution, marketing and consumption by audiences. This should be accompanied by study of the use of online magazine editions and the issues that they raise for the production, marketing and consumption of a magazine brand.