The news comes just a fortnight after Emap revealed it was closing the once-mighty Smash Hits magazine. According to ABC figures for July-December 2005, the total circulation for teen entertainment magazines fell to 391,238 copies, compared with 507,472 six months earlier and 623,158 the year previous. This represents a year-on-year fall of 37.2% for the market.
The last issue of Smash Hits appeared before the ABC figures were released. Emap has blamed the declining popularity of the magazine on competition from the internet and mobile entertainment, as well as changing tastes in music.
The full extent of readers' desertion became clear today when the Audit Bureau of Circulations revealed that over the last six months, Smash Hits has shed 23.3% of its circulation to sell an average 92,398 copies an issue. A year ago, the average circulation was 126,100 copies.
The news was even worse for BBC Magazine's Top of the Pops magazine, which dropped almost one third of its circulation over the last six months. It sold an average of 96,576 copies an issue, down by 31.1% on the figure for June 2005.
Hachette Filipacchi UK looks to have exited the market in good time, with TV Hits, which it sold to Essential Publishing in June 2005, seeing a 24.6% fall in circulation over second half of the year to sell an average 63,644 copies an issue.
It's Hot, BBC Magazines' other music title for teenagers, fell by 21.7% for the period to record a figure of 64,321 copies.
There was little good news for the teenage lifestyle titles either. Hachette Filipacchi's Sugar fell back from its market-leading position to lag behind Emap's Bliss.
It saw a 12.3% drop in circulation over the last six months to 250,099 copies, while Bliss rose by 0.3% over the same period to 277,165.
Hachette unveiled plans earlier this year to relaunch Sugar in a smaller format in an attempt to win readers back. Last November, the publishing company closed ElleGirl in the UK after failing to file an ABC figure in June.
Elsewhere in the sector, National Magazine Company's Cosmo Girl, back to being published once a month after a trial period as a weekly, saw its circulation rise by 5.8% during the period to 173,135 copies.
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