Research of institutions: Bauer Media

 A History 

“In 1875, Ludolph Bauer has just turned 23 when he sets up a printing plant in Hamburg to produce business cards.”

(https://www.bauermedia.com/en/company/history/)

Over the next 100 years, the same family held this company and started asking magazines, with the first women’s magazine coming out in 1970. A few years later, the Bauer family buys stakes in a local TV network and radio station. 

In 1981 they launched their first women’s magazine I the USA, 1987 IN Britain AND 1991 IN POLAND. Polish and British radio stations followed in 2007, and 2008, and in 2012 and 2015, Bauer expands to Australia and New Zealand .at the same time, Bauer becomes Europe's number one radio collective.   

Bauer embraced cross media convergence in the 1990s, and launched their website, and lots of their magazines also went online. 

Bauer constantly listens to their feedback and constantly makes sure they are supplying what their readers want.  

Homepage 

Bauer advertises its Cross media presence with a large slidely in the centre of the page  

The site says this on every slide of the slidely, emphasising its cross media presence. And telling the reader how influential it is on the industry. 

Included in this Slidely, is slides dedicated to smaller properties of Bauer that have a niche audience. This helps those properties as the mainstream audience of the website could also become the audience of the smaller property. (Jenkins – Audience conversion theory)  

The task bar at the top of the screen tells the reader all of the pages that Bauer can offer. When clicking on these, a menu of sub headings appears below. This helps to declutter the webpage and keep it simple for the reader. Doing this can be considered a convention for websites, and helps an older audience cope with using an unusual website. 

 

The banner, situated below the large slidely, can be seen as a ‘lead story’ it features bright and eye-catching colours which contrast with the general style of the webpage, which is white and blue. Because of this, it feels out of place, and alien. This does however fit with the context of the story, as it is a limited-time training section. By running information like this, it casts a positive view of Bauer and makes them seem helpful. Adverts and training can be seen as a convention for large media institutions. 

At the bottom of the page, Bauer has information on the institution and all associated properties. This is a convention or webpages, as it is a requirement for webpages and companies 

 

Genres and target audiences.  

Bauer truly embodies, 'Build it and they will come'. The have hundreds of magazines and radio stations for every possible audience, both mass and niche. They have a large number of women's magazines, which are a very mass audience, however the magazines can be split into sub-genres, which can refine the audience they get. They also provide specialist niche magazines such as cars and fishing, as well as smaller radio stations that focus on smaller genres of music.