Hachette Filipacchi's Sugar, Panini's Bliss and Mizz, and DC Thomson's Shout all posted circulation losses for both the period and the year. The Panini titles were particularly hard hit, with Bliss losing 30.2% of its circulation in 2008, or nearly 40,000 sales, while Mizz lost 18%.
The sector's ongoing difficulties reflect the migration of young girls to the internet. Teen titles such as Smash Hits, CosmoGirl and Sneak all closed in the past three years after major publishers began to retreat from teen magazines. Sugar still leads the market and has managed to hold its circulation relatively firm at 153,721, down 2.3% for the year and 3.2% for the period.
Top of the Pops stands alone in the teen entertainment sector, and even with its TV flagship reduced to seasonal specials, it managed to expand 0.6% over the year, taking its circulation to 125,558.
BBC Teen publisher Duncan Gray says: "This is the third time we have been up year on year. When you consider that some of our competitors have had a really tough time of it, we feel pretty bullish about what we've got on the news-stand."
