Created in 1968, five years after the merging of UK's three leading magazine publishers - George Newnes, Odhams Press and Fleetway Publications by the creation of a parent company called the International Publishing Corporation (IPC), IPC was reorganized into six division:
- IPC Newspaper
(including The People and The Sun, also the Daily mirror and Sunday Pictorial)
- IPC Magazines
(consumer magazines and comics)
- IPC Trade and Technical
(specialist magazines, later known as IPC Business Press Ltd.)
- IPC Books
(all book publishing)
- IPC Printing
(all non-newspaper printing operations)
- IPC New Products
(launching pad for products which used new technology)
Some of the important history of IPC Media includes:
The launch of Woman's Own's in 1932, the first full-colour magazine at the cost of 2d, it's first issue was promoted with a free cover-mounted gift - three skeins of wool with every copy. During the war in 1940s, IPC's women's weeklies kept up with the morale of Britain's women and supplying an essential information service on behalf of the Government, which the covers are now regarded as classic works of art. 1963 was one of the most important year for IPC Media as the formation of the International Publishing Corporation took place, bringing the three rival magazine companies together. In 1970, IPC was acquired by the Reed Group to form the giant global corporation, Reed International. Within the same decade, the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh were welcomed by IPC to it's King's Reach Tower HQ while HRH drops in on Horse & Hound, Country Life, Woman and Woman's Own. Later on in the 1988, the formation of European Magazines Ltd was announced, launching the UK edition of the international title Marie Claire. A decade later, IPC Magazine was sold to Cinven for £860m which was one of the largest management buyouts in UK history. As we reach a new millennium, IPC Magazines was renamed IPC Media, creating a new strategy based on being a brand-centric business. Look was launched in February 2007 by IPC Connect, which was the first glossy high street fashion and celebrity style weekly magazine in the UK, also known as the biggest ever lauch in IPC's history. Recently in January 2010, IPC Media restructured around three key audience groups: men, mass-market women and up-mark women.
IPC has been associated with all types of magazine and a wide range of target audiences over the years. Following are some popular and recognizable examples:
- Country Life
It is an quintessential English magazine with comments in depth on a wide variety of subjects which includes architecture, gardening, the countryside, schools and wildlife. It's target audience are mainly ones who live the real country house lifestyle, likely to be men between the ages of 40+.
- Amateur Gardening
This is currently the best-selling weekly gardening magazine in the UK with supports by expert opinion and tips from some of gardening's most influential exponents. This magazine is aimed at ones who are interested in growing as it covers a wide rang of horticultural interests. which means the target audience will most likely to be mainly women between the ages of 45 to 60.
- Woman's Own
From the title of the magazine, it clearly shows the target audiences are woman, likely to be housewives who are over 40 years old. This magazine reaches over 600,000 engaged women every week and it mirrors the readers' lives and encourages them to be fantastic, it champions health, wellbring and value. Real women's stories are included throughout the magazine so that the target audience will feel related, it also provides discounts and deals from a variety of brands which is perfect for housewives.
- NME
It is the longest published and most respected music weekly magazine in the world which reaches over 1.1 million music fans between the ages of 16-24 every week. It entertains it's readers with the most exciting and authoritative coverage of the very best in the latest news in the music industry.
IPC might be an appropriate publisher for a new music magazine because not only has it build up great reputations throughout the years, it also has the experience of publishing a music magazine - NME, which was well respected and gather millions of music fans. Therefore IPC will be certain of which type of advertisements and what type of articles will attract the majority of music fans. I have came to the conclusion after researching IPC Media that the sort of genres of music/types of magazines IPC is likely to publish are punk rock, goth and metal. Seeing as that was the genre of their famous and well respected music weekly magazine, it is quite likely for them to follow the path as they have a large amount of audience already in the UK. Although the chance of IPC Media to publish a mainstream music magazine can not be disregard seeing as they are quite likely to attract a large amount of audience too with their tremendous reputation.
Alternative publishers like Bauer will also be appropriate for a new music magazine. Similar to IPC Media, Bauer has also established a considerable reputation and has an enormous amount of readers all over the world. The worldwide circulation of Bauer Media Group's magazine titles amounts to 38 million magazines a week. Bauer also has the experience of publishing a punk rock music magazine, which is currently the world's biggest selling weekly rock magazine. Due to Kerrang's popularity, a TV programme was created named the Kerrang! TV, it specialises in Rock Music and contains music videos which are open scheduled with text requests from their playlist.
http://www.ipcmedia.com/
http://www.ipcmedia.com/about/companyhistory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPC_media
Great bit of research into this important company.
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