Smash Hits... the end of an era

whiskeyman

You mightn't have bought it yourself, but no doubt you had a brother / sister or friend who always had it, with their mega posters adorning their bedroom walls.
And don't forget the lyric pages.... and maybe even a FREE TAPE!!!



http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1700153,00.html

Guardian wrote:

Smash Hits, the magazine that postered teenage bedrooms across Britain for nearly 30 years, is to close after its mix of pop lyrics and heart-throb interviews lost its appeal with young readers.
The last edition of the loss-making title, published by Emap, will appear on February 13. Smash Hits has seen its circulation decline from a height of 1m in 1989, when Kylie and Jason graced the cover, to 120,000 as it lost out in the competition for "bedroom time" to the internet and mobile phones.

Mark Frith, editor of Emap's Heat magazine and a former editor of Smash Hits, said the "pioneering" fortnightly had been caught out by the rise of digital media. "Today's teens want faster, deeper information about music and can now satisfy their hunger by accessing information on a whole range of new platforms including TV, the internet, mobile and so on."
Marcus Rich, head of Emap's Metro division, added that the magazine's market of 11- to 14-year-old girls has much more eclectic views and music tastes than it did in September 1978, when the first edition appeared with Belgian one-hit wonder Plastic Bertrand on the front cover. "We were noticing that the traditional tribal allegiances of liking pop or rock has changed."

Those cultural shifts have affected the entire teen entertainment magazine market, which has seen a sales decline of 30% over the past three years. Advertising revenues have deteriorated as the food and drink industry curbed advertising to under-18s, in response to government warnings about marketing sugary snacks. Over the past three years the number of drinks adverts in teenage entertainment magazines has declined from 50 pages per year to four. As a consequence, advertising revenues at Smash Hits have nearly halved over the same period.

Mr Rich said the Smash Hits brand would live on as a digital radio station and a music TV channel, but its parent company would not pump cash into an ailing print title.

"The market has suffered in terms of advertising and the decline in circulation," he said. "We have recognised it by moving our products to other platforms. Because we are a public company we have to look really closely at portfolio management. The issues that we have seen affecting Smash Hits show no sign of changing, so the level of shareholder return we are going to get will be minimal."

He added that the closure of Smash Hits due to its teen audience moving onto digital platforms was not a gloomy portent for the magazine industry. Emap, which also owns radio and trade exhibition businesses, spends more than £20m per year on product development, most of it invested in new magazines.

"Our biggest investment last year was in Grazia magazine. We fundamentally believe that magazines will continue to grow, as the next ABC [circulation] figures will show."

Despite owning a number of market-leading brands such as Heat and FHM, Emap is unsentimental when a famous title gets into trouble. The Face, one of the iconic brands of British magazine publishing, was closed by Emap in 2004 after it struggled to defend its counter-cultural niche. Emap still owns the rights to the Face brand, but has no plans to revive the title.

The closure of Smash Hits will affect 10 Emap staff, with the group hoping to relocate "most" of them elsewhere. The current editor, Lara Palamoudian, is working on a new, unspecified project for Emap.

Hot seat

The editor's seat at Smash Hits seems an unlikely springboard to success, but a number of journalists have gone on to bigger things after editing the title. In one of the most rehearsed pop anecdotes, Neil Tennant was an assistant editor in the early 80s before forming Pet Shop Boys. The founding editor, Nick Logan, edited the first edition, above, under a pseudonym in case it was a flop - he considered calling it Disco Fever - and launched the Face two years later. Other 80s editors included David Hepworth and Mark Ellen, who later founded Word magazine, and Barry McIlheney, the Emap executive who oversaw the debut of Heat. Kate Thornton edited Smash Hits in the 90s and is now a presenter on ITV, while Emma Jones had a short-lived career as a columnist on the Sun. Heat editor Mark Frith, who was also in the Smash Hits chair, said former staff "will always have a special place in their hearts for it

Kolodny

Many years ago I used to secretly buy it and hide it under my bed thinking my mum would be mad at me for spending my money on magazines. Of course she eventually sussed this but didn't get mad and actually started buying it for me.

So looked forward to the new issue each fortnight and the anticipation of who would be on the cover, what posters, crappy badges, stickers, lyrics etc. there would be (me and my mates would tape ourselves singing along to something in the charts, very badly, and think we were dead cool).

End of an era indeed *sniff*

grumpytrousers

Yeah - I think it's sad that it's gone, 'cos there was a time back in the early to mid eighties when it was a darn good music magazine. I remember the SH annual from 1985 with its interviews with people like Morrissey. I'm sure it has become dated, but one way or another it certainly did get a lot more people of a certain age listening to music, reading about music and above all reminding people that while there'll always be a place for indie-style posturing, naval gazing student rock and solo-singer-songwriter mallarkey, the 3 minute perfect pop song is still a joy to behold...

Wertz

I used to subscribe to this back in my halcyon days...still have a few copies in shoebox someplace from the late 80s.

Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys fame used to be an editor and writer on this in it's heyday.
How could it really comptete in today's digital world though?
Pop is such a fickle genre and kids that would once have snapped this up have moved on to mags that espouse gaming or that fill pages with slimming tips and how to give your boyfriend felatio at age 11.

Yet more of my childhood floats off down the river...
*feels old*