Readership Statistics

http://www.nrs.co.uk/downloads/pdf/general_magazines_201611.pdf

This website shows magazine companies readership statistics in many categories, highlighting to the businesses the amount of males and females reading each magazine, the age of their readers and the socio-economic positions of their audience, helping them to produce a magazine that will appeal to the most possible people. They can also use the information to see how other magazines are doing and potentially research what they do so they can take ideas to improve their own work. The statistics show weekly, fortnightly, monthly and quarterly magazines in a wide variety of genres of magazines.

Empire has a predominately male audience, with 548,000 readers being male. This is nearly 75% of their audience as 187,000 readers are female. This mostly male audience allows Empire to target their magazines towards men, using certain things that males closer relate to, for example bold text, big images and large fonts. These can help attract a male audience, which is clearly their main readership area.

Out of their 735,000 readers, 502,000 are in the economic class of A, B or C1. People in these class are upper middle, middle or lower middle class, and are likely to be in a managerial role. This suggests that two thirds of their audience have high levels of disposable income. The other 234,000 readers are in C2, D or E classing, which means they have not got large amounts of income, and some are also unemployed. This could mean that the sales from the lower economic classes may not have subscriptions to the magazine as some months they may not have the capabilities to buy luxuries.

The age of the readers have a huge range for Empire. 383,000 of their readers are between the ages of 15-34, with the other 352,000 being over 35. This tells Empire that they have a very diverse audience range, potentially making it very difficult to create a magazine that appeals to those of all ages. Films are enjoyed by the youngest children, all the way to the oldest adults, meaning that anyone might want to buy a copy of the magazine. However, the research shown on the website could be used to presume that half their audience are likely to want to buy the magazine online, where as the older readers may prefer a tangible copy.

For our magazine, we will want to make it suitable for all ages as shown with Empire, the readers have a wide age range as films are enjoyed by all ages, young and old. This means that we need to make our magazine enjoyable for elders as well as the youth. What is more likely is that the older generation are more likely to want a tangible, physical copy of the magazine, where as the younger generations are more likely to read it online as the youth are more knowledgeable with technology and the internet. This means that the colours, fonts and images on the paper copy may be directed to older ages so that they enjoy the magazine more. Online we may direct the colours, fonts, images and advertising to younger ages. This could be more applicable to the advertising and images online as these are more likely to grab the attention of the youth as well as generate more advertising revenue.