The latest magazine circulation figures for the first half of 2012 do not make pretty reading. Among the worst hit are women’s lifestyle titles and lads mags.
However regular readers will be delighted to hear Private Eye goes from strength to strength. It is up nearly 10 per cent over the first six months of the year, based on a continued commitment to high quality journalism and the rich material afforded by political and media industry scandal.
But elsewhere on the magazine shelf it's looking pretty brutal. A whole host of magazines such as More!(-37.6%), Reveal (-25.1%), Love It! (-18.9%), Pick Me Up (-18.6%), Look (-16.7%), Now (-16.1%) and New! (-14.9%) are tanking. Closer (-6.3%), Best (-6%) and Chat (-6%) aren’t fairing much better.
It was bad news also for OK! which lost nearly a quarter of its readership year-on-year and Hello said goodbye to 15 per cent of its readership. Celebrity gossip mag Heat is also in a continued decline, down 11.2 per cent year-on-year.
In the world of men's magazines and lads mags things are looking bleak.
The biggest loser is arguably Nuts. Not only is the magazine down 21 per cent, that follows a £500,000 relaunch last year which was intended to be a response to a previous 20 per cent drop in reader numbers. It seems that relaunch didn't work.
Its rival title Zoo is also down 15 per cent, while FHM had a terrible year, losing 20 per cent of readers.
A sobering day at the office for the UK's magazine publishing industry.
Wank mags and gossip rags - goodbye and good riddance.
Posted by: Joe Fonebone | Aug 16, 2012 at 16:32
How ironic that the lads' mags losing out are, on the whole, porn dressed as journalism. The internet has all their target market's needs. Even those who actually like to read are finding that sites like askmen.com have what they want, but for free. There's no going back from this.
Posted by: Matt | Aug 16, 2012 at 21:21