The recent NZ Audit Bureau of Circulation results confirmed that New Zealand’s most popular weekly magazine is one whose primary offering is a week’s worth of humble TV listings.
TV Guide, published by Fairfax Magazines, leads all other weekly magazines with a circulation of 188,119, ahead of popular weeklies like Woman’s Day, NZ Woman’s Weekly and New Idea.
In a world where TV listings are increasingly available in daily newspapers, weekly TV inserts and magazines, this little mag has maintained its position ahead of an avalanche of competition.
Woman’s Day, published by ACP, includes a “free” TV listings guide in each issue. Titled TV Day, this thin lift out once carried gossip and entertainment news, but has since been pared right back to TV listings only.
The Listener, published by APN, carries weekly TV listings among current affairs features and opinion columns, as well as TV and radio previews and reviews.
Sky TV’s SkyWatch goes to subscribers each month, offering full programming information. It doesn’t carry the free-to-air listings, but has a wealth of content for the Sky channels.
In addition to publishing daily listings, the NZ Herald, also published by APN, includes Time Out, a colour broadsheet-sized lift out on newsprint. Time Out is inserted into Thursday’s Herald, which will set you back $1.50 for the whole paper. Similar TV listing lift outs are published by other newspapers, such as TV Week by the Dominion Post and The Press – both Fairfax Media papers.
With competition like this coming thick and fast, TV Guide has done well to keep ahead of the busy magazine market. The lessons here for the communication professional are basic, yet key – and worth keeping in mind.
Simple is best: TV Guide’s offering is straight forward and to the point - TV listings, packaged up with a mix of international and local TV and entertainment content. Rather than trying to be all things, it nails its core offering – which Kiwi TV fans clearly appreciate.
Know your market: The success of TV Guide proves there IS a market for a stand-alone weekly TV listings publication, even in the face of free and accessible competition. At a RRP of $1.90, it is much cheaper than other women’s weeklies, which tend to be priced around the $4 mark. Yet it has a decent amount of entertainment news, gossip, and puzzles to keep a bored housewife content. After all, household shoppers (female, aged 30-59) make up the majority of TV Guide’s readers.
Appearance is everything: A handy A5-size booklet may not work for any other kind of magazine, but for TV listings it’s perfect. It tucks nicely into the recliner pouch or rests unobtrusively next to the remotes on the coffee table. The fact that it is so small makes it instantly recognisable in the supermarket aisle, and the content appears considerable.
Apply these principles to everyday communications and you won’t miss your target. |
