The May issue of The Face will go on sale on April 8 and Emap said that over the coming weeks and months it will be exploring opportunities to radically reinvent the title. However Dharmash Mistry, managing director of The Face publisher Emap East, admitted that Emap was also considering selling the magazine off or closing it completely like J-17.
"Reluctantly we are suspending The Face with immediate effect from the May issue. In the meantime we continue to focus our energies on further fuelling the momentum on the rest of Emap East's style portfolio -- Arena, Arena Homme Plus and Pop," Mistry said.
The last edition of J-17 will be the May issue, which goes on sale on April 12. Emap said it plans to put all of its efforts behind stablemate Bliss.
In a statement Dawn Bebe, managing director of J-17 publisher Emap Elan, said: "Having made this tough decision we will now concentrate all of our efforts on making Bliss the best teenage lifestyle magazine for girls that it can be. The teenage market remains core to Emap, hence Bliss gains our complete focus and our determination to see it emerge even stronger from this point."
Emap said it was in discussions about finding alternative employment for the teams within the company and that the redeployment process has already started.
Ten days ago it was reported that the two titles were under review due to their decreasing circulation. In the latest set of ABC figures The Face was down 7.8% on the previous six months to 40,286. Its circulation is down 4.6% year on year. J-17's circulation is down to 134,650, a decline of 6% year on year. J-17 has come under increasing competition from teenage websites and The Face's demise has been put down to the title losing its edge.
At the weekend it emerged that former 'Neighbours' star Jason Donovan was leading a group of investors to buy The Face. In 1992 Donovan sued The Face for libel after it said he was gay. He was awarded £292,000 in damages but waived the cash as the then independent magazine would have been bankrupted. Insiders would not confirm this but said that they were talking to a "number of interested parties".
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