Audience, Audience, Audience

In my last post, I talked about which genre I wanted to use for my project and quickly settled on nature/science.  With this subject area comes a corresponding target audience, so I set out to find out which one best suited my chosen genre and idea I had for the magazine.  

The search was not immediately fruitful, but I eventually came across this really interesting analysis map.  The website from which this picture came from contained very little text, but it did have some very important information.  This analysis map showed that Smithsonian and National Geographic, two magazines that I am interested in emulating, especially the latter, are predominantly read by males from 40 to 55 years old.  Looking at this, I saw immediately that there were some things I wanted to challenge.  I want to put forth a gender-neutral product that will be appealing to everyone, regardless of genre.  Still, I understand that the audience that is interested in science and nature is predominantly male.  As for the age range, it seemed just right.

So now I have an idea of the direction I would like to head in considering gender and age range, but there is still one more aspect of the target audience to consider:  socioeconomic status.  For this information I turned to The Pew Research Center.  In their article "Magazines: By the Numbers", the analyzed the ways in which magazine consumption had been changing through the year 2012.  One especially relevant piece of information was a line graph that showed that the people who read news magazines had annual household income of around $90,000 in 2011.  Further researching found that that income fell within the bracket for "middle class".  I think that this data is comparable to the economic status of the people who consume nature/science magazines.

Therefore, I conclude that my target audience is males (edging towards gender neutrality) between the ages of 40 to 55 and of middle class socioeconomic status.  Now that I have established both the genre of magazine and its corresponding target audience, I can really begin to consider the kind of look my magazine will have. (Stay tuned, "The Look" is next post's topic!)

Citations:
"Demographic Profiles of Magazine Audiences." Demographic Profiles of Magazine Audiences. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.
Olmstead, Kenneth. "Magazines: By the Numbers." State of the News Media 2016. N.p., 31 Jan. 2012. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.
"What Is Middle Class, Anyway?" CNNMoney. Cable News Network, n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.