Magazines births and closures

Following on from the closure of Arena magazine Maxim is the latest casualty in the Men’s Lifestyle market.

Maxim’s circulation has been in free fall for many years, along with most of the other titles in this sector! Maxim’s fall from grace illustrates a collapse in the lad’s mag marketplace.
With circulation high’s in excess of 350,000 Maxim has fizzled out and publishes its last issue in May (cover dated June). The magazine will continue to be published in the US and some of these copies may end up in British stores but for now Maxim UK will only be available online.

The Men’s market has been undergoing many changes for a long while now. Originally dominated by the big monthlies, changes have been made. Instead of monthly titles such as Loaded and FHM, IPC and Bauer (formally EMAP), launched the weekly Nuts and Zoo titles to try and invigorate this sector yet again, but unfortunately for both publishers the weeklies simply cannabalised their own monthly circulations and the rot started to set in.
FHM formally circulating in excess of 750,000 copies per month has lost nearly half a million copies and now circulates 270,000 copies per month, although still a strong circulation how long will this last? Now the market is dominated by the freely distributed titles such as Shortlist and Sport yet another tactic and possibly the future for failing national newspapers.

Whilst people still continue to enjoy the feel of real magazines, Dennis publishing has invested heavily in it’s online offerings. Not only is Maxim now being published online but this move has probably been encouraged by the success of Monkey magazine that now has an ABCe audited figure of 1,009,298 users per issue.

So its farewell to Maxim and Arena, but Adman suspects that their will be some more high profile closures in the coming months.

Which titles do you think won’t survive the next year?

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