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The NRS surveys a panel of people about their newspaper and magazine readership habits and then produces estimates of the average readership per issue of a publication. It acts as a counterpart to the Audit Bureau of Circulation's newspaper and magazine sales figures.

The latest figures compare the estimated number of readers an issue for the first six months of 2004 with the first six months of 2005, and contain ugly news for men's monthlies.

Loaded saw its estimated readership decline 24% from 1.65m to 1.26m, while Maxim's also declined 23% from 991,000 to 760,000.

Market leader FHM was also hit, losing 12% from 3.2m to 2.89m.

Their ABC sales have been hit by the rise of new men's weeklies Nuts and Zoo, but the NRS figures include only one reporting period for these two titles so do not show whether their readerships are increasing.

Nuts scored 1.302m readers an issue -- more than Loaded -- during the first half of 2005, while Zoo had 1.013m.

There were significant readership changes elsewhere in the magazine market, such as an 18% rise for Closer, the celebrity weekly from Emap, from 1.05m to 1.25m. This compared with a 2% fall for its stablemate Heat, from 1.9m to 1.86m.

IPC's best-selling Now kept growing with a 6% rise from 1.19m to 1.26m.

In the women's monthlies sector, Cosmopolitan was revealed to have the most readers, although it lost 2% from 1.95m to 1.92m. Rivals Glamour lost 1% from 1.18m to 1.17m and Marie Claire lost 6% from 1.26m to 1.18m.

Good Housekeeping achieved a 17% increase from 1.36m to 1.59m, while Country Living rose 25% from 658,000 to 825,000 and Company rose 21% from 611,000 to 739,000.

Finally, the keenly fought TV listings sector saw readership declines, with the exception of Radio Times, which added 6% from 2.9m to 3.08m.

The biggest-selling title, IPC's What's on TV, lost 5% from 4.19m to 3.96m. Bauer's TV titles also suffered -- TV Quick lost 15% from 1.5m to 1.28m and TV Choice lost 9% from 1.53m to 1.4m.

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