Institutional Analysis - Empire Magazine

Purpose:

• Steven Spielberg - 'Empire is the best movie magazine in the world bar none. Quite simply, it's peerless'. 
• The previous quote pretty much sums up 'Empire' and it's purpose as a magazine. It is quite simply the most popular movie magazine on the market and thus it has to constantly release the highest quality magazines in order for it to keep this title. 
• It can offer audiences many different exclusives that other magazines cannot offer because of it's popular/well-known title. This in itself gives the magazine a purpose of constantly wanting to find new exclusives (interviews etc with stars) in order to keep and expand their already large audience. Without these exclusives, 'Empire's' audience would most probably look elsewhere.   
• according to Bauer, Empire's purpose is to provide, 'indispensable insight into cinema, both blockbusting and classic'. 
• It is evident that Empire, in stark contrast to magazines, such as 'little white lies' and 'sight and sound', provide far more mainstream coverage of the bigger and more high-budget movies being released. Having said this, they do still cover the more independent movies, which could again suggest something about their purpose as a magazine. They would like to hit all audiences (basically film fans in general, instead of particular 'niche' audiences that might buy the more independent magazines), in order to increase the consumption of their product. 
• Perhaps the purpose of empire magazine is emphasised through their particular style of reporting - They attempt to reach out to all different audiences (mainly male of all ages) and this can be seen throughout the magazine, with pages devoted to hundreds of different movies of all different genres and styles. This idea of the magazine being mainstream as previously mentioned gives it a purpose, which, as Bauer explained is to give audiences an insight into cinema (of all different genres) that cannot be seen elsewhere from any other magazine on the market. This is why people buy empire magazine.

MT