There have been enormous changes in the media landscape since the early 1980s (and particularly in the late 1990s), many of which have brought potential threats to the magazine industry. Most newspapers now have multiple sections, with supplements and magazines, many dealing with the kind of lifestyle topics which were previously the province of consumer magazines. On television there has been a rise in available channels as a result of digital and cable access, with an increasing proportion of output being given over to `magazine-style' programmes dealing with topics such as cooking, fashion and home decorating. The Internet, which in future will be responsible for the most dramatic changes affecting all media, is just beginning to grow strongly in the UK, with businesses of all kinds anxious to gain a presence.

Within the magazine industry there have also been changes, some of them in response to the encroachment of other media onto traditional magazine territory. There has been a rise in the number of magazines - 350 more magazine titles were listed in British Rate and Data (BRAD) in 1998 than in 1997 - but there have also been closures. In general, the lifespan of a magazine tends to be shorter than it was, and companies are more likely than they were to cut their losses on a title that is not performing well.

The majority of the key consumer magazine titles are owned by a relatively small number of major publishing companies, including IPC Magazines, EMAP PLC, The National Magazine Company, Condé Nast Publications, G & J of the UK, Bauer and BBC Worldwide. At the more specialised end of the market, there are a large number of small companies catering to niche audiences. Consumer magazines obtain revenue from a number of sources, including copy sales, advertising revenue and (increasingly) from related products, or `brand extensions', such as exhibitions and licensed goods.

The UK magazine market, based on advertising and circulation alone, was estimated to be worth £2.68bn in 1999 - an increase of 59.4 percent since 1994. The proportion of revenue derived from copy sales as opposed to other sources has increased over the past ten years; in 1999, almost three-quarters of total revenue came from copy sales. This is partly due to the fact that cover price increases have generally been ahead of inflation.

Within the sectors covered by the scope of this report, women's weekly lifestyle magazines dominate the top ten in terms of numbers of copies sold, including long-standing titles such as Woman and Woman's Own, plus newer entrants like Bauer's Take a Break, which was in top place in August 1999. The only male lifestyle title to reach the top ten is FHM, which was in second place.

There are many challenges facing the market for consumer magazines. These include competition from other media, such as newspapers and customer magazines, which have begun concentrating increasingly on the kinds of lifestyle issues covered by consumer titles. The Internet also poses its own challenges.

In addition, the marketplace for magazines has become overcrowded, and advertisers, faced with a wide choice of media and methods of communicating with their target markets, have become increasingly demanding.

This report investigates the state of the magazine industry today, and examines the way it is responding to these challenges. Original research is used to examine consumers' views on magazines and the issues surrounding them.