Top of The Pops Information and general magazine sales

Top of the Pops magazine information
Top of the Pops is published by the BBC and is still rather popular, even after BBC stopped broadcasting the original show. The magazine is published monthly and features chart information, star and celebrity gossip, fashion and beauty advice, quizzes, song lyrics, competitions and posters. The magazine was launched in February 1995 and is well established in the media industry from not only the BBC programme, but also for giving the Spice Girls their nicknames- Ginger, Scary, Posh, Sporty and Baby Spice. The Top of the Pops magazine was originally resembled as the “missing link” between Smash Hits and NME magazine, but the genre of the magazine gradually changed from music, towards a less musical, and girlish magazine. Top of the Tops also links into many different types of media. For example, as it is published by the BBC, it is associated with other magazines and programme’s such as Cbeebies.

Magazine sales
In the media industry, magazine profits have gone down as they’re sales figures have decreased. For example, “Kerrang!” the heavy metal genre magazine suffered a 27.9 per cent drop from its June 2007 figure of 83,610. It had an average sales figure in the first half of 2008 of 60,290. This shows us the dramatic decrease in sales from just one particular magazine. The decrease in all magazine sales could relate to many ecological issues in the environment. For example, the recession could have a huge impact on the sales as members of the public are cutting down on the things they buy which arent necessarily needed. Another reason could also be the particular genres of magazines sold in the market. For example, every magazine is a specific genre such as Hip Hop. However, the times have changed and many young people don’t like only one specific genre of music anymore. Many young teens enjoy a variety of different music, this could be because theyre still developing and havent found their true inner soul yet. This shows that the magazine industry arent responding to the needs of the customers. Leading on from this, relating it towards my project, a magazine could be created of a mix of different genres. A mixed genre magazine could then entice a really wide audience of different ages, genders and backgrounds- which could make the magazine more successful.