"The difference with us is, we're not just going to do storyline-related stuff, we're going to try and go behind that and go to the actor or actress. That's our job. If someone is bashing up someone else that week in Albert Square, putting two big faces on the cover just wouldn't work for us."
So said Ian Abbott, editor of IPC Media Ltd's TV Times, when discussing his magazine's philosophy on soap opera.
A lot has happened in the TV listings industry world since part one of this feature was published. But then, that's the nature of the business. The new ABC circulation figures for the last six months have been published, and news has broken TVQuick is being revamped. We'll get to both in a moment, but something that's unlikely to change - for now, at least - is the art of a good cover.
H Bauer Publishing's Jon Peake - editor of TVChoice, TVQuick and Total TV Guide - is clear of the value of his publications establishing a strong relationship with soap opera, particularly when it comes to creating an arresting, saleable front cover image.
"TVQuick and TVChoice are always soap-led on the cover," he says. "We have tried other programmes on Quick before, like Bad Girls, but it didn't work.
"I feel when people look out for mags, they want to read some sort of cover-line that's going to make them think, 'Oh, I didn't know that was going to happen'. If you do a TV programme, it's just like, 'This TV programme is on', so I don't think that's very exciting."
In the main, he says, the definition of soap generally extends to just two programmes: EastEnders and Coronation Street.
"You have to go for the stories," says Peake, "and they're the ones with the biggest stories. I mean, obviously they all go in their peaks and troughs. We try and vary it as much as possible, but sometimes we seem to go weeks doing the same thing all the time."
I wondered if there was a certain type of soap character the magazines favoured.
"A couple is good," he tells me. "People on their own tend not to do very well, nor do two women together. So a couple is always good. Three is even better." And then, with a laugh, "Four is a goldmine!"
Four?
"I really don't know why it seems to work. Perhaps it's kind of the more the merrier? But it's so hard to fit four people on a cover, and also to find a quartet who are all related to the same storyline. "
Soaps also define the cover strategy for IPC's What's On TV. Editor Colin Tough explains how this came to be ...
"When What's On TV first launched in 1991, it used to have covers of absolutely everything, so we'd do Cannon and Ball, or Tom Jones. Prince Charles was on it once. It was really a weird - but interesting - mixture.
"Then we got to the point where we'd only have dramas and soaps. We introduced the Australian soaps, Neighbours and Home and Away during the time they were doing really well over here, with Kylie and all that sort of thing. Gradually that evolved until we were featuring soap opera exclusively - but the Australian ones dropped off in popularity.
"For a while it was just British shows and Robson Green, because, funnily enough, he really worked for us at one point. But then there was some scandal involving his marriage - I forget the details - and the public seemed to ... well, he didn't have the same effect on the cover.
"From then on, it was purely soaps, which actually boiled down to only EastEnders. That was when I took over What's On TV. For some reason, Coronation Street just wasn't working anymore. I think there was a year - around 2003 or 2004 - where it seemed the only thing we'd put on the front was Alfie and Cat. I mean, literally, we did a third of our covers on them, because the difference when you're selling 1.7 million can be 50,000 - and 50,000 is a hell of a lot.
"Inevitably we sometimes get letters from people saying, 'Why oh why do you always put EastEnders on there?' and I have to reply, 'It seems to be what our readers want'."
Over at BBC Worldwide's Radio Times - which prides itself on eschewing wall-to-wall soap coverage - editor Gill Hudson says their cover strategy is to go for something striking which makes you stop and look.
"Every week we have a covers meeting," she explains, "looking at the likely contenders. Some programmes sound very promising and actually, when you look at them you go, 'Oh, blimey!' So that's quite difficult and we always have some stock features in hand in case there's such rubbish out there we have to create our own cover entirely.
"Once we did '50 Films That Changed Your Life'. Fantastic! It sold brilliantly. I'd rather do that then put some real rubbish on the cover - some programme that just doesn't deserve the Radio Times seal of approval."
Although it goes unstated, Hudson is clearly passionate RT uses its covers to reinforce its uniqueness.
"No one else would have done the Bleak House shoot we did", she says, "or this year's Doctor Who fold-out. Both the readers and the industry absolutely loved them."
The examples cited highlight the magazine's policy of staging its own cover shoots where possible, rather than relying on publicity stills issued by the channels. It's something TV Times is now exploring too, in its push to be seen as a premium title.
Keen to communicate this to their readers, Ian Abbott explains: "The way we do that is by using behind-the-scenes pictures of the actual shoot in the magazine, to show our access and to illustrate the fact we've actually gone along and done it.
"We haven't just taken our pictures off the BBC notice board and claimed it as an exclusive like some people do," he continues, before reflecting, "'Exclusive' is the most overused word in journalism."
It's a sentiment Gill Hudson agrees with.
"It bugs me," she says, "because I think it's become an abused term. When it's on Radio Times, it absolutely is an exclusive. We get the only interview with some people. No one else has got the photos we have. But other people use the term when their writer has been sitting in a room with 20 journalists for a five-minute talk with a Hollywood star. That's not my idea of a great exclusive.
"But I'm not going to stop using the word out of some prissiness., even though it's been degraded a bit."
Jon Peake is pragmatic on this point.
"It's nice to have an exclusive, but it's rare," he says. "There's really no such thing anymore.
"But we do run a lot of one-to-one interviews, and we tend to get everyone we want - unless it's someone like Peter Kay who will only speak to Radio Times. Those kind of stars get big and then drop the listings magazines - whereas when they were starting out they were only too pleased to have our support.
"You have the odd soap celebrity who we'll try to speak to, only to get, 'They only want to speak to the broadsheets'. You can't help thinking, 'Well, does it put bums on seats? This does'."
As for exclusive cover shoots, Peake is skeptical of their worth.
"I don't think readers really know if the cover's an exclusive shot or not," he says. "How would they? Besides, the soap operas now know what we want, so they tend to provide pictures accordingly."
For Jonathan Bowman, editor of TV & Satellite Week at IPC, the nature of the shows his publication covers makes exclusive content difficult.
"As a rule," he says, "the amount of coverage we give to something will generally reflect how much access we've got."
In his case, the added complication is that the majority of interesting programmes on satellite originate from the US.
"We do try and get in on things quite early," he continues. "We've got stringers in America and we get invited to the junkets where they'll do these big programme launches. We'll also buy secondary rights to features published in the States or other overseas territories.
"The difficulty is the channels we deal with don't have the same kind of control over the talent as the BBC and ITV do. But as a rule, we do get access. It may not be quite the access we'd like - perhaps it's not face-to-face - but we do get stuff over the phone. It is particularly an issue for photos. That's more of a problem - you're never going to get exclusive pictures".
"There's something quite talismanic about being over a million"
Of course, the pursuit of exclusive content is really - along with everything in magazines - the pursuit of sales. On 17 August 2006, the latest ABC six-monthly circulation figures were published. From the TV listings industry, TVChoice immerged the victor recording both an impressive year-on-year and period-on-period growth.
Its new average weekly circulation of 1,287,773 is up 11.2% on the year, and 6.2% on the last ABC period.
Nevertheless, What's On TV - with 1,509,519 readers - remains Britain's best selling magazine, despite the fact its sales are down 9.8% on the year.
When I'd spoken to Colin Tough back in June, I'd asked him about the continued pressure to deliver high numbers.
"I'm always aware of that on a Friday when the figures come through," he says. "I try to tell myself, 'Ah it doesn't matter' but, yeah, it's always in the back of my mind. That's why I can't really take chances with What's On TV, much as I'd like to. There are things I think, 'It would be quite nice to have a go at that', but if we get it wrong, we'll lose 30,000 sales, and that'll put us off forecast.
"With What's On TV being the biggest magazine in IPC by quite a long way, if we catch a cold, one other magazine could actually get pneumonia. You know what I mean? A lot of profit from us does go down to the smaller publications which are maybe not selling a great deal. If they're kind of teetering on the edge - and I don't think we've got anything at the moment like that - it could have an effect. It is quite a responsibility."
Jon Peake's take is almost the opposite. Although he concedes, "You don't want sales to go down", he feels that TVChoice's healthy figures provide him with the opportunity to experiment, and doesn't feel bound to a specific successful formula.
"You can try things on TVChoice," he muses. "If a cover idea doesn't work, and you lost 30,000 sales, it wouldn't matter. But if you did that on TVQuick [which sells much less] it would be really hard to recover. The next week, Choice will put on those sales again, but with Quick, once people drop off, they really seem to stay off."
At 1,070,042, Radio Times is 2% down on the last period, although this is considered a steady performance within the industry. When I met Gill Hudson in May, we'd also talked figures.
"Radio Times is quite stable," she says, "and sales are actually as good as they've been in literally years, which is great.
She admits, "There's something quite talismanic about being over a million," and continues, "we're still comfortably above that.
"But the issue to me is back into the kind of brand level. We are now beyond the magazine, if we're talking about Radio Times the brand. And if you're talking about the brand - and how many people who take the website and magazine - you're looking at Christ knows how many. Double that number.
"So, that's the real issue as we go down the line and we turn into a truly multi-media age. It's going to escalate. It'll suddenly go 'phew!', into hyperspace and then your brand reach will count for everything - and our brand reach is phenomenal."
Over at TV Times, which recorded year-on-year and period-on-period declines of 10.9% and 8.6% respectively with an average weekly circulation of 372,712 (about a third of its old rival, RT), Ian Abbott is remarkably candid.
"We've been going down 12, 13% year-on-year," he admits. "Our aim, to start with, is to make that between 8 and 10%. The last three or four issues we've been under the 10%. So it's a big thing for us.
"It may seem strange to other magazines which are going up, but in order to turn something as big as TV Times around, I think it's going to take a few years before we can get down to a very low percentage decrease. Then there's that one day when it'll be a year-on-year with no loss and we can all take a holiday! That's what we're aiming for eventually."
Aside from content, a major factor in determining a magazine's circulation is price.
"Price is massively important," says Jonathan Bowman. "At £1, TV & Satellite is the most expensive on the racks, and that's a real block for us.
"If the consumer was to do any kind of comparison with the other titles, they'd go, 'Well, you've got less pages than TV Times, and considerably less than Radio Times. And you've got fewer features pages than Total TV Guide or TVQuick'. The only thing we win on - and then we only tie with Total TV Guide - is in the number of listings we have.
"So price is a massive issue, it's certainly blocked us growing. In our market, all the growth is now in the budget sector. All that's happening is they're eating away at the premium titles.
"Nowadays, people are making a judgment call. For many these magazines are a functional choice, they buy them primarily for the living room. The other stuff - the features and so on - are nice, but it's not massively important to a lot of people.
"Clearly, if we were 35p or 50p, our sales would be much more."
It's a fair point, and few would dispute TVChoice's recent success owes a lot to a price war, ironically instigated by rivals IPC in 2005.
"TVChoice was 40p," explains Jon Peake, "and then What's On TV did this big price slash, so obviously we matched it. Then they launched TV Easy which was the same price as Choice, so we dropped our price even more.
"Since then they've had to put theirs back up, and we haven't. So, yes, price is very important. It's certainly worked for us."
Nevertheless, despite Bowman's fears, the most recent ABCs put TV & Satellite Week at 211,822 over the last six months (a rise of 2%). The magazine's Bauer rival - Total TV Guide - is also on the up, notching a 10% increase on last period with sales now at 101,295. The budget sector's campaign is yet to truly take hold.
"In a crowded marketplace TVQuick was slightly adrift,"
The pinch - as TV Times has already learned - is currently most keenly felt in the mid-range market. Or, more properly, by TVQuick, the only mid-range title left.
"TVQuick is losing sales quite fast," says What's On TV's Colin Tough with some small glee, "which I suppose is why everyone else has got out of the mid-range sector".
At TV Times, Ian Abbott concurs. "After Radio Times, TVQuick is seen as our secondary competition, but they're struggling very badly at the moment."
With sales down to 262,172, the magazine has dropped 8% over the last period, and the consensus is that's a trend which is going to continue.
Perhaps inevitably, then, on 15 August news broke that the magazine was set to relaunch with "a new look, more celebrity gossip and an increased cover price." Understandably, Jon Peake hadn't mentioned any of this during our original conversation in June, so I took the liberty of catching up with him to find out more.
"In a crowded marketplace TVQuick was slightly adrift," Peake admits. "There's the budget end and the premium end, and TVQuick didn't fit into either category. It looked like a budget mag, but was sold at a premium price. I think people were confused by it. We wanted to stem the decline of our readership. Regular readers love it and we want to hang on to them, but of course, it would be great to bring in a few new ones as well.
"The magazine was looking a bit tired too, so we decided it was time for a revamp.
"We've always had it at the back of our minds, but we only really started talking about it properly earlier this year. So we hammered out some initial ideas and took it to research. We got the thumbs up, so went straight back and took about two months working on it."
He's keen to stress Bauer are in no way throwing the baby out with the bath water. "Do bear in mind it's not changing completely," he says. "This is more of a refresh. It's certainly not a relaunch."
When the new look issue hits the stands on 19 September, Peake says readers are going to see, "The look has been brought right up-to-date, with new fonts, a polished up logo and a complete redesign.
"We've also introduced some new regular features," he continues, "and beefed up our fashion, news and soaps coverage. We've replaced Trisha Goddard, our agony aunt after six years. But we've not lost sight of what makes TVQuick TVQuick. It's a modern magazine for the modern woman!"
"My children use the EPG a lot more than I do"
While Peake and company clearly hope TVQuick's future will be assured by these changes, industry experts continue to rumble on about the challenge poised to the industry by the rise of Electronic Programme Guides (EPGs), websites and even TV listings delivered to mobile phones. All five editors concede new technology presents issues for their publications, but none seem overly worried.
"I think there's always going to be a need for people to have that 'book' in front of them when they're watching television," says Ian Abbott. "My children use the EPG a lot more than I do, but I still think, within that, if you've got a good magazine with lots of extra things in terms of features, there's still going to be a place for you in that modern market."
"The TV listings industry is not going to go away," asserts Colin Tough. "I have to confess, though, I certainly expected EPGs would have an amazing hit on us.
"IPC actually produced the first digital EPG in the UK before Sky. We did it for the Cambridge Interactive TV Trial back in 1995. It was an interactive TV Times, and I kind of drove that because I thought we were going to lose big sales when people start to use these guides.
"But of course, once you do use an EPG, you realise that they're great for now and next, but if you try and plan an evening you can't do it. It's just easier with a bit of paper in front of you when you're watching television."
Jon Peake concurs. "An EPG doesn't give you nearly as much information as a magazine," he reasons, "and you have to go off the screen to see it. It's great if you're just sitting there, but if you're a dedicated TV watcher and you really want to know what's on, then you buy a TV listings magazine.
"As for websites, it's still the case that not everybody has got access to the internet. I remember when I worked for a book publisher about 15 years ago, they were saying, 'In 10 years time there'll be no books, it'll all be on CD ROM'. Well, that never happened either. Websites are great, but they're a compliment to a magazine."
On Radio Times, Gill Hudson is clear of the importance of a web presence.
"The Radio Times website is a huge resource," she says, "and it can do things the magazine can't. That's the trick: What can it do that the magazine can't?
"So many websites duplicate what's happening in the magazine. Well, what's the point of that? But on ours we've had behind-the-scenes footage of our BAFTA shoot, with live footage of people moving and talking. You can't do that in a magazine, but how great on the website!
"Plus, the site's got 350 channels or something on it. You can't possibly get that into a magazine. But that's when you're using your site properly, when it and the magazine are utterly complimentary and utterly dovetailing each other."
Nevertheless, a step into cyberspace remains a long way off for Bauer.
"We haven't talked about creating a site for any of the magazines," confesses Jon Peake. "I think our readers don't need to go on the web. Total TV Guide might be a different matter, but no one's told us that's what they want. Until they do, we'll be quite happy with paper."
Looking further ahead, Jonathan Bowman is more concerned about evolutions in television itself.
"It's these weird hybrid computer home entertainment systems which I don't really understand, but I know they could be trouble for us when they arrive," he says.
And it seems we might be on the cusp of this revolution in viewing right now.
"The emerging challenge for us is that people are actually downloading programmes and watching them through their computer," says Bowman, "and they're maybe watching different episodes on their phones.
"Also, a significant number now opt out of watching a show on broadcast and wait for it to be released on DVD box-set, and that's something else we don't currently recognise.
"But the big deal for us over the next year or so is that the broadcasters are now previewing episodes online a week before they're screened. Something like The Apprentice website was getting a huge number of hits with people viewing additional footage. So TV & Satellite Week almost needs to become a sort of web guide into the bargain."
"It is the Radio Times and there's nothing like it"
I'd started out on this rummage through the TV listings industry in an effort to educate myself in the publications beyond my own choice of guide - Radio Times. What I'd learned was nowadays the market is being driven by two hungry red-tops, What's On TV and TVChoice. Their failures and successes are defining the industry's future - or, at very least, driving the ebbs and flows within its readership of five million. Jon Peake had put it succinctly when he'd told me: "The budget magazines are on the march".
And yet, still disgracefully RT-centric, I couldn't help but quiz Jonathan Bowman, Jon Peake, Colin Tough and Ian Abbott on their perception of that magazine.
"I think Radio Times is in a different market to What's On TV," Tough tells me. "I don't think our readers go, 'Shall I buy Radio Times this week, or What's On TV?'."
Pushing the point a little, I wondered if it ever irks him that RT enjoys a higher media profile than his own publications.
"You get used to it," he sighs. "But I think it annoys the team more than me. We're selling half again at least as Radio Times. What we do looks easy, I think, because it's simple. But actually, it's more difficult to produce our magazine, and we do it on a week-in, week-out basis. So, sometimes my staff are put out by the fact we don't win Magazine of the Year every year. But that's not what we're in it for really."
With TV Choice, Jon Peake finds himself in a similar situation.
"Although I hate the term, I just don't think the budget magazines are considered to be sexy enough by the media," he tells me. "They'd much rather be talking about a publication that sells 80,000 copies like GQ than they would a million-selling TV listings mag. And if they do talk about one it's Radio Times.
"It's almost as if Radio Times is the authority on TV. If you were new to this country and you read something like Media Guardian, you'd think there was only one TV listings magazine in the UK. The others never get a mention. But you don't sell 1.3 million copies of a magazine for just sitting back and doing nothing. You have to work hard, and people don't realise that."
RT very self-consciously places itself on a plateau above its rivals, but Peake thinks this is a mistake.
"It is kind of unique," he says. "It is the Radio Times and there's nothing like it. But it is, at the end of the day, a TV listings magazine, and it is competing against all us other TV listings magazines for a slice of the market. So I don't see how they can consider themselves not to be a part of that. It's almost a bit of a naïve thing to think."
Jonathan Bowman cites RT's longevity as its defining factor.
"I'll be honest," he declares, "listings magazine are not things many people get emotional about. Radio Times is probably the one exception, but that's because it's part of our heritage and people have grown up with it. They might have gone through three generations where that magazine has just been passed on in the house from grandparents to parents, and they've just carried on reading it."
Although it's been a long time since TV Times was considered RT's rival, Ian Abbott reckons: "Radio Times is still our competition, but not as direct as it once was, because we're now in very different markets." Despite that, he says it is still the case that, "When Radio Times does something massive, it does slightly affect our sales."
He also admits that after all these years, a small proportion of the readership still look on his publication as the "ITV" to RT's "BBC".
"Judging by the postbag, there is still a slight perception that we're allied to ITV," he says. "But if you refer to our covers, it's slightly unfair, because we have done BBC shoots as well, and we'll continue to do so. I do admit we've always had a good relationship with ITV, though, and - at its best - the channel is about family entertainment, so it sits perfectly with us. But we'd never feature something purely because it was ITV."
So what of the grande dame of the listings industry herself?
"I think on the newsstand we are very different," says Gill Hudson. "I think we're in competition with the newspapers more than anything - something like The Guardian Guide. But then, we have more than one television in the household these days, so what tends to happen is Radio Times is seen as the one in the front room with the big telly, and the newspaper ones you might leave upstairs where you're watching in the bedroom."
In May, Hudson picked up the Periodical Publishers Award for Editor of the Year.
"Colin Crummy from the UK Press Gazette rang me up," confides Hudson, "and said, 'Did you notice something about the big winners?' I replied, 'Wasn't it great that Radio Times, Good Housekeeping and that young upstart Country Living - only 20 years old - got all the awards? Fantastic! How brilliant that really established brands which are not flavour of the month, are acknowledged as really delivering'. And he said, 'Oh, I didn't mean that, it's that all the editors are women'. And do you know, I hadn't even noticed."
She says it took her about "six hours" to "go native" on RT, despite her initial reluctance about taking on the job.
"Honestly, it was that quick. Extraordinary. It really does get to you."
And it does. But this week, as I file this article, I've had an epiphany. I've stopped buying Radio Times. I can still read it every week for free where I work - so the affair isn't truly over, and it'll remain the first thing I'll turn to on a Tuesday morning. But as for what's sitting alongside me when I flick through the TV channels - well, it's not Gill Hudson's cheery letter, or Alison Graham's latest moan. And - sorry Jon, Jonathan, Colin and Ian - it's not one of your publications either. It's the magazine I now work on as TV Editor.
Who'd have thought it? Other listings magazines are available.
WITH THANKS TO IAN ABBOTT, JONATHAN BOWMAN, GILL HUDSON, JON PEAKE AND COLIN TOUGH.
