Times Biweekly–An Analysis Of Its Characteristics And Development Plan

Times Biweekly is a magazine that deals with social issues and culture. Since the magazine’s founding in 1999 the two most important and characteristic columns, “Exclusive Planning”and "Observation", have captured the attention of the industry and the public. Times Biweekly known by the industry and readers as " China’s " time " magazine " and has become one of Hunan’s signature publications.Times Biweekly has been through three distinct stages up to this day. From a confused beginning through a period of revision and then a restructuring to arrive at the current stable stage. The key to the current success is the strategy of one body held aloft by two wings. The body being the excellent content of Times Biweekly and the wings paper and digital media. The current goal of the company is to increase their circulation from 600 thousand copies to more than a million per issue and expand the digital portion of their business. This essay will attempt to analyze the success of the magazine by examining the topics and style of the content as well as what topics are used on the cover, the layout and the use of cultural resources.The current success of the magazine is due largely to sound content, a good work ethic, and successful use of third party subscription sales. Market analyses and targeted advertisement played an important role in expanding the reader base. Any successful magazine relies on good writers supported by solid editors and management staff and Times Biweekly boasts excellent management practices and business strategy. All this has made a big million copy issue an attainable goal.There are however problems to be dealt with. New media is increasingly replacing the old, profits are down and subscription numbers are decreasing. To attract a wider audience the magazine has widened the scope of their content which also had the effect of each topic receiving less extensive coverage.(The aim will be to play to their strengths and narrow the scope of their content to the topics they are best at and in so doing attract a larger share of the readership of those topics.)To deal with the new situation the company intends to expand into new media by using e-commerce, wechat, microblogs, a pay-to-use app and internet publication. I believe that Times Biweekly is representative of the industry and by analyzing the company’s process of dealing with the new environment there may be lessons for the publishing industry as a whole.