Editorial staff at Emap East are bearing the brunt of the latest efficiency drive. Just days after the departure of FHM editor Ross Brown last week, Arena's editor Will Drew was sidelined to Emap's new project team.
FHM's trumpeted revamp last autumn, which promised to reconnect the title with its core audience of "tempered hedonists", appears to have misfired and Emap East's editor-in-chief, Anthony Noguera, is under pressure to make the magazine - one of the publisher's flagship titles - punch harder.
In August, Emap talked of a need to regain momentum in the men's market. Six months on, with little evidence of this in the ABCs, the message remains the same.
Rob Munro-Hall, the former Emap Australia managing director who (in October) took over as head of FHM and Emap East, says that despite the publisher's general push to extend its cross-media offerings, he wants to change perceptions of its magazines among advertisers.
"There's a definite need to refresh all of these titles and get them back on the front foot," he says. "In particular, there's not enough differentiation between Zoo and Nuts. We have to reinforce the need to buy Zoo weekly, and that means a more compelling product that's relevant to more young men."
The appointment of former Sunday Mirror staffer, Ben Todd, as Zoo editor should, he says, strengthen its topicality, particularly in sport.
Despite Emap's woes, it is IPC's Loaded that is the biggest faller this time round, down 12.3%, and the title has faced news-stand pressure recently, with Tesco taking it out of some of its bigger stores.
Eric Fuller, managing director of IPC Ignite, offers no quick fix for the decline. "We're still seeing a long-term transition from monthlies to weeklies," he acknowledges.
"The rate of monthlies' decline will slow, but I can't say with confidence that these drops are anywhere near the bottom of the cycle."
Instead, he is keen to use Emap's misfortune to his advantage, with Nuts extending its lead over Zoo, commanding around 40% of the market by volume and closing the gap on FHM in average copy sales at four times the frequency.
Meanwhile, Dennis is on a charm offensive with Maxim, hoping to persuade potential readers it has turned the corner since parting ways with editor Greg Gutfeld. Sales are still down, but the drop has slowed significantly to 10% after the last period's 21.4%.
Bruce Sandell, managing director of Dennis' consumer division, says: "More than ever, we have to justify readers' investment in the product and hammer home the value of a monthly."
Consequently, Dennis has upped its investment in Maxim's covermounts to more than £1m this year. Dennis owner Felix Dennis is now looking to sell Maxim's 30 editions outside the UK.
Dennis' main battle, however, is on digital platforms. Rather than join the Zoo/Nuts bunfight, it launched digital magazine Monkey in November, which is now reaching 209,612 men, according to ABCe.
Alex Randall, head of press at Vizeum, expects that, for all the talk of changing print products, publishers will increasingly jostle for position online.
"They're limited by just what people will buy - there's not much they can do if people want an instant read rather than something more considered," he says. "The problem is whether they can monetise it online, which is unlikely."