Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2001 | Page 32

28

Popular Culture Review

several of them said they didn’t like it, it was a cheat and a con, it wasn’t a proper
diet. When we analysed what it was they thought was a con about it, it’s because
it’s one of those diets where they give you a variety of breakfasts to choose from,
a variety of snacks, you make up your own selection of things. They didn’t want
that, they wanted to be told at eleven o’clock eat this banana, at five past twelve eat
this. It was allowing them too much choice ... we will alter subsequent diets ... it’s
very interesting because two of the people who were on the diet are on the staff
and they said honestly this was the best, most effective diet they’d ever been on
and we’ve had letters from people since saying how fantastic that diet was, do you
have any information on it, is it in a book, where can I buy it. But I think for the
time being, until the climate changes a bit more, we’re going to have to go back to
the old style of doing it. There are all sorts of things we’d like to do in the magazine
but we can’t because they won’t let us. They being the readers (Editor, interviewed
May 1997).
In addition to trying to please readers, sales figures have to be improved or at
least maintained, rival publications have to be monitored, and advertisers have to
be kept happy. As McRobbie (1996) notes, the need to be ahead of the competition
is vital, and this need was one of the motivations for the true life trend in the ‘new
weeklies’. B e st and Bella, in the late 1980s. The commercial environment of
magazines also indicates the importance of acknowledging the political economy
approach to the media, which considers the ownership, advertising and power
relations involved in publishing, as well as the audience. Commercial pressure on
magazines, especially advertising (weeklies receive around ha