The rise and fall of MasterChef magazine : an object biography

One of the most high-profile recent entrants into the competitive and lucrative field of Australian special interest magazines was MasterChef magazine, which ran from May 2010 until November 2012. MasterChef magazine was a component of a self-referential group of media products that spun off the eponymously-named television series in Australia which, premiering in 2009, itself developed from a suite of British television programs and associated media that has been expanding and morphing since 1990. This article presents a biographical history of MasterChef magazine, focusing on an account of the magazine’s genesis, development, growth and demise. It offers a preliminary survey of its covers, content and writers, and begins to outline its relationship to a range of other MasterChef related media, with particular reference to other publications. It also describes the role MasterChef magazine plays in the highly branded contemporary culinary media environment and suggests areas for future research.