End of an era. For reals.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Emap to close Smash Hits magazine after 28 years
by Jennifer Whitehead Brand Republic 2 Feb 2006

Smash Hits: brand will live on

LONDON - Emap is to close Smash Hits magazine after 28 years, succumbing to the trend of young readers deserting magazines to spend time online and their money on mobile phone content.

In the last set of circulation figures, published by the ABC in August 2005, Smash Hits reported a drop of 4.4% to report sales of just over 120,000 copies an issue -- hundreds of thousands of copies fewer than it sold in its heyday in the late 1980s.

Smash Hits will live on as a brand in the form of a music television channel, which is available on cable and satellite, and a digital radio station, which launched on Freeview in 2002. The last issue of the magazine will appear on February 13.

As well as being the music and entertainment bible for a generation of teenagers, the magazine famously counts a number of celebrities among its former staff. These include Pet Shop Boys frontman Neil Tennant, who once boasted of having introduced the phrase "pur-lease" to the magazine, and the 'X Factor' host Kate Thornton.

The magazine was founded in 1978 by Nick Logan, who had previously edited the NME. Logan went on to create 80s fashion bible The Face.

Things are tough in the market for teenage publications. The Sunday Times is considering closing its children's supplement The Funday Times, while Hachette Filipacchi abandoned ElleGirl magazine after four years because of its dwindling circulation.

In the August 2005 ABCs, not one of the teenage-targeted magazines recorded a rise in circulation.

Publishers blame a variety of factors for the desertion of readers, including more diverse tastes in music and fewer exciting stars, and more competition for pocket money as teens turn their mobile phones for entertainment.

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I never read Smash Hits. I spent all my pocket money on Just Seventeen instead so I could read the problem pages innit. I gather "teen girl" mags like J17 and Sugar are still popular? NOT THAT SORT OF TEEN GIRL cough cough. If you are interested in music then you will buy specialist mag. If you have a passing interest then J17 et al have plenty of pages devoted to Hairstyles of the Rich and Famous (and their music). Trust me, I had to photocopy about 300 pages of said magazines to make just one Busted press pack.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

thing is all the tween mags are music obsessed, covered in big pix of mcfly and rachel, and girls aloud, and son of dork. what distinguishes smash hits? that it does lyrics? no, some of the others do that too.

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

You get stickers with Smash Hits?

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

you get MORE with It's Hot, and usually a transparent pink stationery set too

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

You mean...when I put my colouring pencils in the pencil case...I'll still be able to see them! In pink! Rad!

[steviespitfire.livejournal.com]

Also, erm, dude, how do you know all this! :)

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

where do you think i got my pink stapler, pink "tvhits" clock and BUSTED poster from??

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I possess an S Club The Movie fuschia plastic alarm clock.

The batteries have run out tho.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

S Club the Movie???

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

They cloned themselves. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362107/)

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Exactomundo. Plus they have stories of Real Life Trauma and How Embarrassing!!! columns.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah the loss of SH as it is now is of no real import. The only times I bought it in recent years was my annual Glasto coach ride purchase which puts me in a niche Hits demographic indeed.

But in its heyday (mid 80s I guess) it was one of the greatest magazines this country ever published.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, e.g. I remember a good feature on U2's Red Rocks gigs, just as they were getting big.

[damnspynovels.livejournal.com]

testement is how many times i've seen that cress in a hippo remark splattered across the web just recently... it's a 20 year old quote and people STILL remember it.

[abby-mcdonald.livejournal.com]

Just a note...
J17 folded about 5/6 years ago. As for the teen market demographic, my extensive interning experience (spent writing QUIZES such as 'Who's your OC mate match?"!) shows that Sugar is going down, (down in an earlier round), since CosmoGirl! and TeenVogue are cannibalising the demographics. A resurgent Bliss is hanging on pretty well since the move to smaller-sizing, while the babyHeat style of Sneak et al is also squeezing the monthlies through weekly 'look, a celebrity' content. Continual free gifts and a shift from monthly to 3-weekly cycles is the latest weapon in the hunt for the kidz cash.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

oh noes, SUgar is great. or was when i last really bought a copy. Bliss was always a bit prissy. Sneak is twee-celeb gossip and does a good job of stoking rumours more than the others, so they're doing something right.

[abby-mcdonald.livejournal.com]

It was all about J17 for me back in the day! Bliss was indeed prissy, and since my shameful, rumour-stoking bylines in Sneak I can't look at a copy. Bitchy content = bitchy office.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

i hope someone one day writes the history of this sector -- i am old enough to recall when das boot J17 surfaced and holed Jackie below the waterline: my sister having devoured Jackie as a young teen, w.me as a baffled add-on sly "niche" reader. But it was pub.by the famous Dundee puritans D.C.Thomson and had for years seemed dowdy. J17 was AWESOME in comparison (also when at NME i once went on a bus trip to Oxford to see Smiley Culture w.the entire staff of J17, all women aged 19 -- I remember NOTHING abt Mr Culture but the drive was great!! I expect they are all head of Reed International now...)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I saw in Borders last night that there's a big-format Best Of Jackie reprint publication out!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

>bus trip to Oxford to see Smiley Culture w.the entire staff of J17, all women aged 19

Cool!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

J17 - really? Oh dear. I quite enjoyed it up until its switch from weekly cheapo to monthly glossy.

I guess nowadays you have the preteen It's Hot type stuff and then the More! end of the market for yer older lasses.

[avv.livejournal.com]

TeenVogue is completely amazing.

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

J17 closed! It was a bit sad, it was better than Sugar and CosmoGirl I always thought.

You can only buy specialist music magazines if they exist for the genre you like, and without Smash Hits there are few for pop. Probably only TOTP could really be called a pop mag now, the others like TV Hits (if that still exists?) were always into other teenage things as well so the lack of good mainstream pop stars wouldn't affect them.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

*surely* TOTP has folded by now?

The awful fate of SH actually takes us back to Tuesday's pop-or-not discussions: SH in the 80s worked cos it assumed everything in the charts, and quite a lot outside, was POP and also treated all of it in quite a similar fashion, with demented irreverence. At some point it stopped doing this: or maybe at some point publicists stopped letting their more 'credible' charges near Smash Hits, the strain between "the pop charts" and what was actually in them got too great.

Also at some point - maybe the same point - boys stopped reading Smash Hits.

[poptasticuk.livejournal.com]

No, my friend works on the design team for it and he hasn't mentioned losing his job so I'm pretty sure it's still going.

I loved the way that Smash Hits when I read it basically ridiculed anything that wasn't pop. I'm sure I would not be anything like as obsessed with pop music if I hadn't read SH so relgiously in my formative yrs.