Narrowcasting in Magazines

Ernie Rideout - Editor of Keyboard magazine

Narrowcasting used to be called "niche publication" or "specialty publication" and it really centers around any particular human activity or consumer group.

Mike Molenda - Editor of Guitar Player magazine

When Guitar Player started in 1967, Bud Eastman, who is the founder, he owned a music store. I think that because he was on the street that he was kind of narrowcasting on his own. It's funny, it was almost like an organic thing. "Oh, I'm just gonna put out a newsletter that tells people how that was done." Well from there, advertisers went, "Oh my God. There's a newsletter that's telling people about how people get their sounds and tones and I need to put my Fender Amps in that magazine. I need to put my Gibson guitars in that magazine." And it kind, it grew from there because the manufacturing community saw Guitar Player magazine as a viable resource to let players know about the products they made.

Matt York - Founder, VideoMaker magazine

Today we're looking at like slivercasting. So in broadcasting you have advertisers who want people who use soap or toothpaste, which is like everybody. With narrowcasting you have a small community of people who love to ride horses and you can actually get people advertised saddles in a narrowcasting environment. So with sliver casting you get people who advertise a certain kind of saddle, an English saddle or some other kind of unusual saddle. So narrowcasting was a great way to monetize the efforts that a publisher put out to create a very small community.