Daripada Umum Kepada Khusus: Orientasi Pasaran Majalah Melayu

The concept of progression cycle was introduced by Wilson Wilson (1995:5-6). The medium of mass media, they said, will go through a cycle of process before it achieved a level of progress. However, the conceptual meaning of the cycle was first introduced by two renowned communication experts, John Merril and Ralph Lowenstein. They introduced a theory of EPS (elitist-popular-specialized) to describe a cycle that any medium will go through before it achieved a level of maturity. The media, due to it disadvantages publishing factors, will started as a medium for selected few before it managed to attract a significant number of audiences. However, popularity will put the media into troubles, especially on the media which depend so much on the circulation as well as on the advertising revenue. Popularity will normally followed by the drop of advertising revenue since advertisers could not concentrate to their focus target group, while the publishers will tend to focus their effort to please their readers than their advertisers. As a consequence, the media will return to do specializing to their niche market. How this concept of progression cycle and EPS theory effect the magazine publishing in Malaysia? This article will discuss this cycle in the Malay magazine publishing and how magazine publishers adjust their editorial contents to suit the demand from the reader and their advertisers.