Many of us get electricity from investor owned utilities (IOUs), like Florida Power & Light or Commonwealth Edison. In urban areas, there are 100 or more homes and businesses on a single mile of electric line. In non-urban areas where landowners have up to 400 acres of land, there are as few as one or two homes per mile of line. In the 1930s when the IOUs determined that it wasn’t profitable to run their electric lines out into the rural areas, farmers and landowners came together to form cooperatives in order to bring electricity to their area. By the 1940s, these co-ops began to form state-wide associations. These associations needed a way to stay in touch with their members and the Rural Electric Co-Op Magazine was formed. Each association distributed a monthly publication to keep in touch with the member-owners of local cooperatives. Today, there are nearly 1,000 local electric cooperatives that own and maintain almost half the electric distribution lines in the U.S. These co-ops cover 75% of the land mass within the U.S. and provide electricity to 36 million people. Why it matters: The readers of electric cooperative magazines are member/owners of their electric utility company, giving them a vested interest and involvement in the magazine. Each Rural Electric Co-op Magazine includes editorial material that’s relevant to the reader, with each edition including localized sections. Anecdotally, the staff members of these magazines know their readers are directly “connected” by the letters, phone calls and e-mails they receive; but the proof is in the research. Nationally, almost 80 percent of readers read 4 out of 4 issues, according to MRI Custom Research. That’s an astonishing number when compared to national magazines, half of which may go unread. Rural Electric Co-op Magazines provide an excellent advertising venue for direct response advertisers as well as branding advertisers. Because many of the readers are in rural areas, mail-order and direct response offers are well received since large retailers may not be available in the area. Echo Media has developed a network of Rural Electric Magazines allowing advertisers the opportunity to reach a large circulation of readers nationally through this response-driven media.