Magazine battlefieldInfotainment drives magazine revolution
Magazine battlefield
Infotainment drives magazine revolution
By Ada Sin
The goal of some traditional entertainment magazines now is merely to maintain their current level of readership. One of them is The Gold TV Weekly, a magazine that has been published for 21 years.
Miss Vanesa Tsang, chief editor of the magazine, said, “I think our magazine can still survive because of the constant support of our readers.”
To retain their support, more celebrity photos are being included in the magazine’s pages, and a low selling price is being maintained. More sections, including horoscopes and fiction, have been added as well.
However, there is no obvious means to success. Miss Tsang said that they were still searching for a suitable direction to maintain their market share.
Meanwhile, the weekly circulation of The Gold TV Weekly is about 15,000 to 16,000.
With the recent entry of two more infotainment magazines — namely Eastweek and Next Magazine — into the market, the situation has been totally altered. Students and housewives, the main readers of traditional entertainment magazines, have been diverted to the two new infotainment magazines.
Said Dr. Ng Chun Hung, a sociology lecturer at the University of Hong Kong: “They (the infotainment magazines) have succeeded because they report news in an entertaining way,” he said.
Mr. Kent Chiu, deputy editor-in-chief of Eastweek, said the market for purely entertainment magazines was shrinking. “They have to upgrade their content and outlook, as well as to widen their perspectives of reporting,” he said.
Dr. Ng said that there was a clear distinction between entertainment and information magazines in the past. However, both types seemed to have declined in recent years.
Today, the main competitors of the traditional entertainment magazines are the large publishing groups.
Said Mr. Terence Tung, general manager of Metropolitan Weekly: “Magazines within these groups can promote one another, but we have to rely on other media.”
Threats may also come from the newspaper industry. Recently, many popular newspapers have expanded their coverage of entertainment news.
Miss Tsang agreed this poses a problem. “Similar items such as interviews, press conferences and news are reported in these newspapers and magazines.”
In addition, newspapers are published daily, which means more updated information than the magazines can provide.
However, Mr. Tung claimed that extended coverage of entertainment news in newspapers was not a threat.
“We investigate news with different angles and with a depth that cannot be probed by newspapers,” he said.
The only way to withdraw from the keen competition in Hong Kong and still survive, new markets would have to be developed. One of those potential markets is mainland China. However, this has hardly been explored, for official reasons.
Although many Hong Kong television programmes are available in mainland China today, entertainment magazines are officially prohibited entry.
Mr. Peter Chow, publisher of TV Week, said the Chinese government was still very cautious about Hong Kong’s publications. “However, our publication can still be informally bought somewhere in mainland China,” he said.
Meanwhile, some traditional magazines have changed their image.
One example is TV Week. According to Mr. Chow, more columns about lifestyles have been added, and the layout has been made more colourful.
Mr. Chow said his magazine could survive in the market because it is the only channel which provides the most updated TV schedules and the application forms of television shows.
Meanwhile, Mr. Tung predicted that it would be very difficult for newcomers now to establish a magazine in light of such vigorous competition.
