Healthy Future Predicted For Consumer Magazines

According to the Henley Centre’s report into how people are likely to use the media in the changing environment of the future, Media Futures 95, there will still be a significant role for the mass media. Consumer magazines are predicted to continue their growth, with as many as 3,500 by 2004 compared to the 2,450 that exist now. The environment will not have changed so drastically that Coronation Street is no longer the top programme, predict the Henley Centre.

However, a significant minority of the population will be left out of the technological future, lacking the money, confidence and interest to use or understand the new technologies, causing divisions among society.

The new technology encourages more active use of media, particularly among the younger consumers; for example the use of teletext among young consumers has grown steadily over the last decade.

The erosion of working patterns and changes in the structure of the nature of employment will lead to a need for labour in two key areas; highly professionals and low skill service sector jobs, neither of which will require the conventional 9-5 Monday to Friday jobs; as a result there will be less need for the sort of mass media content used to frame the routines of the conventional working week, ie breakfast TV and radio, the Sunday newspaper or prime-time television.

But despite these changes, the mass media will still have a major role; by 2004 Coronation Street is likely to still be the most popular television programme, although its audience will not be as high as it was in 1974 or today. There will still be national newspapers because the newspaper fulfils an important role in meeting specific consumer needs which will evolve but not radically change.