TimeWarner's takeover of British publisher IPC media...

TimeWarner's takeover of British publisher IPC media has given the NME brand a new lease of life. Discuss.
Your answer should shopw an understanding of the comcept of Synergy as it relates ro media businesses and convergence (multiplatform delibery of content).

The NME, a music magazine published weekly, was under the wing of IPC Media, the UK's largest consumer magazine publisher. However, the magazine sales were dwindling and was circulating around 40,000 copies a week. The magazine then branched out into the internet media and developed a website in 1996. In 2001 TimeWarner came into ownership of IPC Media and along with it, the NME.

Now under the wing of the second biggest conglomerate globally, the NME has strived into other fields, increasing their popularity immensely. From clubs to iPhone applications, the NME has secured itself in the world of contemporary media thanks due to the funding and thriving of TimeWarner. In 2006 NME.com was named 3rd most popular music in America after only just a few short years online. This furthers the grasp of NME to those without physical copies of the magazine in a modern way, after only a decade the NME has expanded itself across the coasts of America with its designated Club NME NYC and LA.

In the spring of 2010, NME the magazine, reinvented itself due to the employment of new editor Krissi Murison. The magazine will be changed following research acquired from TimeWarner funded surveys, to make it a more opionionated magazine. This makeover, with its aim clear to increase profit margins from the physical copies of the magazine was designed to approaqch new readers whilst pleasing current ones.

The status of TimeWarner has allowed the NME to thrive and branc out in the way of multiplatform media, for example, a new iPhone application version of the NME is availible, the first of its kind, pushed forwards by TimeWarner. NME is allowed to do this as now they are under a umbrella of financial security and reassurance. Nestled with TimeWarner the NME has branched out into radio, setting up a new radio station with an impressive over a million listening hours. NME will become profiterable with advertisements as the NME's key demographic, 15-34 year olds, will be targets for advertisement campaigns made by companies interested in them. It recentely won an award from Sony for its 'groundbreaking concept and extremely fresh approach and sound'. This publicity, furthed from the synergy between multimedia brands under TimeWarner due to the investment into new technologies of sending and recieving media.

TimeWarner's takeover of IPC Media has given the NME a further lease of life, I believe that if it hadn't, the physical copy of the NME would of dwindled away, leaving only the website to keep it's legacy. With TimeWarner NME has allowed to branch into multimedia platforms and convergence, allowing the NME to once again rise to it;s once great peaks atop the music industry newsfeed.