The magazine "Se og Hor" was started in September 1978. At that time, about 2,2 million magazines were sold every week in Norway, in a community counting a total of 4 million people. The magazine was accorded a probation time of 6 months to reach a break even of about 85.000 copies a week. 100.000 copies. From the beginning, the circulation was about 100.000. Today the circulation is 220.000 copies - and "Se og Hpr" is with that the fourth biggest magazine in Norway and has occasionally been number three. The motto of the magazine is: "Se og Hor makes life happier". The contents might be compared with a mix of the American "People", the German "Hor Zu" and the Danish "Billedbladet". The total turnover in 1983 was about 10 million dollars, 80% of the income referring to the sale of the magazine, 20% to advertising sales. The increase of circulation is quite unique in the Norwegian press.
The paper presents the objectives, the method, some results and forms of utilisation of a survey (ISJ Survey) on the reading habits, as regards the periodical press, of Italian children and young people (aged between 6 and 17), on exposure to other advertising media and on the interests and consumption of youngsters, in the age groups considered.
I should like to spend a little time not talking so much about the finer statistics of "Sunday Times" polling when the "Sunday Times" is being published, but about some of the more general problems that we have had in recent years in the British Press. Yesterday one of the speakers accused the Press - not just the British Press - of treating polling during election campaigns as a horse race. I have news for you: it is a horse race. Anybody who thinks that journalism during an election campaign is not ver largely about that horse race; and anybody who thinks that the reason why newspapers spend money on polls is other than principally to analyse the progress of that horse race and predict their result as accurately as possible, is just not living in the world of journalistic considerations and newspaper budgets.
It's not know-how about opinion polls but pure journalistic knowledge of how to integrate opinion and attitudinal research in the journalistic formula.
Open discussion about the "Journalistic developments in the use of opinion polls".
Newspapers and other periodicals are still an important part of the communications Industry today, and they make an immense contribution to the work of informing the masses, and thereby to the forming of opinions from adolescence on. It is therefore of primary importance that a freedom of "expression" should be made secure, as is indeed the case, I think, in the majority of industrialized countries . But once information is freely expressed in printed form, it must be placed just as freely at the disposal of the reader. Any citizen must be able to choose his or her reading matter in complete freedom. This implies some organization for the distribution and sale of periodicals, in the interest of maintaining that freedom. My subject today, - and my pleasure, - is to let you know of the French solution to this last problem. This solution originated right after the Second World War ... in 1947 to be exact! And for over 30 years, this solution has been providing satisfactory results both to publishers and to the public. We can say therefore that the system for distributing periodical publications in France is workable ... and, furthermore, it is economical!
As yet, measurements of the effectiveness of campaigns in the industrial press are rarely used, and have not always found a specific adaptation to industrial problems. A study carried out by us on the direct and indirect effects of the industrial press showed that the latter was responsible, in 26% of cases, for the discovery of suppliers in industry ; in this respect, performance is higher than for exhibitions (19% only). Furthermore if a manufacturer is noticed and remembered because of an advertisement in the industrial press, his chances of being chosen as supplier are increased by 65%.
The paper describes a research project which explores some aspects of the way advertisements in press and television communicate - as seen from the perspective of the consumer. Special emphasis is given to the technique used to handle the vast quantity of verbal information collected - linguistic coding.