Question 5 - What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Media institutions form a large part of the overall production and distribution process of magazines, distributing millions of magazines around the UK every day. These institutions often focus on a particular type of magazine e.g. fashion, women’s lifestyle and music, although most offer a diverse range of magazine types. I researched the most popular publishing houses in the UK to find out which one is most likely to distribute my music magazine. These included institutions included Bauer, IPC, National Magazines and Dennis Publishing. Visiting their websites allowed me to see which magazines they publish and come to a conclusion about which would be the most suitable to publish Key Change.

The first website I visited was the website for Conde Nast publishing house. Conde Nast is an American company and is a division of the company Advance Publications. Founded in 1905, it is one of the most popular publishing houses in the world. Its headquarters are in New York.

Magazines owned by Conde Nast include the fashion and beauty magazine, Glamour, fashion magazine Vogue and Brides magazine. This is the link to the Conde Nast website - http://www.condenast.co.uk/

The next publishing house I researched was Dennis Publishing. Dennis Publishing is an independent publisher and was founded in 1974. As of April 2010 it published 31 magazine titles, predominantly in the UK. The company is male-orientated, publishing some of the most popular men’s magazines around, including current affairs magazines, magazines about cars and technology magazines. Titles include Auto Express, PC Pro and PokerPlayer. As there don’t seem to be any music magazines published by Dennis Publishing, it would be useful for them to have one. However, my magazine is aimed at females, and would not fit in with the overall impression of the publisher. This is the link for the Dennis Publishing website - http://www.dennis.co.uk/
IPC Media is one of the UK’s leading magazine publications, selling over 350 million magazines every year. Brands published by IPC include the fashion and celebrity gossip magazine Look, the TV news magazine TV Times and Marie Claire fashion magazine. IPC Media covers a wide range of magazine types including music (NME magazine). As there is already a variety of music magazines published by IPC I will not be choosing this publisher to distribute my magazine. This is the link for the IPC Media website - http://www.ipcmedia.com/

I have chosen to use Conde Nast publisher http://www.condenast.co.uk/ to distribute my magazine. This is because my magazine is different to anything else they publish and will create a new scope for the company. A music magazine among the fashion, lifestyle and celebrity magazines they publish will be different and give the company something that other publishers don’t have.

Media Ownership – Concepts

Vertical integration is where one company owns many co-operations that work together in the media line. This means they could own a television channel, radio station and magazine that are all under the same name. An example of this is NME music magazine http://www.nme.com/magazine. With a magazine, website and television channel, NME ensures viewings from every possible form of media, increasing its reader population and total viewing figures.

Horizontal Integration is where two companies that are in the same industry merge together e.g. one music magazine joining up with another music magazine. This is popular in media production as usually when people here that a company is joined with another popular company, their knowledge of the other company increases the chances of the public purchasing products from that company.

Conglomeration – two companies that are part of completely different industries often join together to increase power and popularity, especially in the media world. For example, a media production company may join forces with a food or technology company, making it easy for the public to associate one with the other and gain a wider understanding of what these companies do for each other and the consuming public as a whole.