The shelves are emptying...

Lad mag update...

Following my previous two fantastic articles (if I do say so myself, no other sod will) ("Men's Mag vs Lad's Mag:Round" and "We want to get Loaded" ) there's been further movements in the magazine market, much down to equal measures of changing tastes and the economy going tits up.

Two of the better men's magazines have gone to the wall. Style mag ARENA finally got killed off after 22 years back in March, and the UK print edition of Maxim has closed down after 13 years on the shelves. It's particularly ironic in the case of the latter as the magazine was showing signs of being quite readable following it's resurrection from the immature mess it became in 2006. However, sales were down 41.4% year on year in the second half of 2008 to 45,951, a far cry from Maxim's circulation peak in 2000, when sales were 328,000 copies a month - though the market-leader rival FHM was then selling around 700,000. It was especially noticeable in the latter issues that they couldn't get any reasonably famous model/actresses/singers/tv presenters to model for them anymore. Maybe they weren't trying, I don't know, and the intention was to run the title into the ground.

Maxim continues online, whilst Brits will be able to buy the successful US print edition instead, which sells an impressive 2.5m copies a month.

FHM has recently cleaned up its act, cut out the tits and remains the country's bestselling men's magazine, at the last count selling over 272, 000 per issue, which whilst well down on the previous peaks, is still an impressive figure, especially if you compare it to the women's magazine sales figures. The likes of Men's Health, the fitness mag go from strength to strength. And Nuts, Zoo and Loaded (15 years old this month folks) are still fighting amongst themselves for an ever decreasing readership and advertising revenue.

What does this all show then? Are men no longer reading mags? Maybe, but there seems to be a shift towards online readership rather than print. And there's enough breasts to be found online to satisfy any bloke.

So, everything I said in my previous articles seems to be spot on...