Soap Opera Magazine

I have purchased a soap opera magazine to get a better view of how soaps are portrayed and how audiences are enticed into watching a certain episodes along with how magazines set them selves out to attract the reader to buy them.

On the front of this magazine it has a picture of a couple who have both recently re entered the soap. The headline is " Kat's Baby Tragedy!" This title is stereotypical of these types of magazines, they use large headlines which strike a nerve with the reader to make them want to find out more. Other storylines which feature on the front page is a character in coronation street being run over and left for dead and a unwanted pregnancy. These issues are quite common place in soaps, they use scenarios which can happen in everyday life and show how other people deal with it.

The magazine uses a large rounded font for the title, this is to draw the readers eye in, other storylines are wrote in similar styles but smaller. The use of colour is very important, one side of the magazine is pink which shows that the audience it is targetting is females. Then the headline is written in white with a bold black outline. All headlines have bold outlines to draw the focus in on them.

I think this magazine is a stereotypical depiction of a soap opera magazine, the use of bright colours, large writing and pictures all draw the reader in with out explaining any storylines. This is a good example of how to set out a magazine to draw the reader in. The need for these techniques is great, in a shop with many different magazines, its the front cover which draws the most attention that gets bought.

I have found images to show the change in soap opera magazines since the explosion of soap operas on television:

By looking at these Soap opera magazines in age order i can view the changes in styles and will create the front cover of my magazine accordingly, so my magazine would be up to date with trends of the time. This way people will notice the soap that i am advertising.