Early Evolution

Article Written by Editor Tony Quinn at Magforum.com

Men's magazines have existed for centuries. In terms of identifying the first magazine, it depends on how the terms "magazine" and "journal" are defined. Certainly journals, in the sense of discussing and communicating scientific matters, were around first; the question is: when did some of them split off to become magazines? The 1663 German publication Erbauliche Monaths-Unterredungen (Edifying Monthly Discussions) makes a claim as the world's first magazine. And, five years later, Giornale de' letterati di Roma, edited by Francesco Nazzari, is seen as the first Italian magazine. However, The Gentleman's Magazine is often considered the first modern magazine. It was published by Edward Cave in England in 1731 and was still going until the first world war. It aimed to entertain, with essays, stories, poems and political comment . In 1755, Samuel Johnson's Dictionary credited Cave as coining the term 'magazine' (which had previously meant a storehouse or arsenal) in its publishing sense: 'Of late this word has signified a miscellaneous pamphlet, from a periodical miscellany named the Gentleman's Magazine, by Edward Cave.'

Pictures became important from 1842, when the Illustrated London News began using many woodcuts and engravings. In 1855, the ILN published a Christmas special with a colour front cover (the magazine is now only published at Christmas). It was selling 130,000 copies a week - ten times the daily sale of The Times. In the latter half of the Victorian era, the differing nature of publishing in the UK and the US became apparent. By 1886, newspapers such as The Times were devoting up to 60% of their space to advertising, whereas the Illustrated London News could only muster 20%. In the US, because of the lack of national papers, the position was the reverse. 

Esquire was founded in the US in 1933. It always stressed its intellectual side, but really established itself in the war years with its pin-up illustrations and calendars by Alberto Vargas from 1940. In 1957, it spun off its Gentleman's Quarterly supplement, which was to end up in the hands of Conde Nast and overtake its parent in terms of sales. Esquire was bought by Hearst in 1986. 

Hugh Hefner's Playboy launched in 1953 in the US, selling for 50c. Marilyn Monroe was on the front cover and featured again, naked, inside. This thrived in the US and around the world. In the UK of the 1950s, Men Only started with a lifestyle brief, but became increasingly pornographic, ending up in Paul Raymond's stable that also included Club and Escort. Richard Desmond's Northern & Shell/Portland group moved on from Penthouse into niches such as Asian Babes and Forty-Plus. (Desmond went on to launch celebrity magazine OK! and take over the Express newspaper group.)

A different model for the men's magazine was Man About Town, an offshoot of the trade journal Tailor & Cutter. It was launched in 1952 by editor John Taylor. MAT mainly covered fashion but included other areas of lifestyle and became something of a cult publication. It counted such luminaries as Gerald Scarfe, Michael Heath, Calman, John Arlott, Raymond Postgate, Mark Boxer and Gilbert Harding among its contributors. It was sold in 1960 to Clive Labovitch and Michael Heseltine. As Cornmarket (later Haymarket) Publishing this duo made a great success of weekly trade magazine Campaign, which forced the closure of market leader Advertisers' Weekly. MAT was later abbreviated to About Town and then Town. At one stage it became a quintessential 1960s magazine, under art director Tom Wolsey, helping to establish photographers such as Terence Donovan and Don McCullin. However, like IPC's Nova, it was not very profitable and closed in the early 1970s.

The Writers' and Artists' Year Book of 1963 listed 70 "feminine" magazines (including nine from the Commonwealth and eight from the US), but just seven for men. Of these, four were aimed at tailors or the men's wear trade (Men's Wear, Outfitter, Style for Men and Tailor & Cutter), leaving Men Only, Town and Esquire (US) as consumer titles.

The advent of colour magazine supplements in newspapers, led by The Sunday Times in 1962, destroyed the advertising base for such magazines in the UK. A similar fate befell IPC's Club. Cosmopolitan publisher the National Magazine Company noted that many men read their partner's magazine and in 1978 tried a one-off edition of Cosmo Man was produced but this was abandoned. 

The Accepted Wisdom

By 1980, it was accepted wisdom that there was no market for a general interest men's title. Areas such as sport were well covered by the papers, and their magazine supplements, usually on a Sunday, but the Daily Telegraph had one on a Thursday. Men bought:

special interest titles on cars, music or humour;

top-shelf" titles in newsagents, with titles such as Mayfair (Paul Raymond, 1966), or those with more literary pretensions such as the US title Playboy or the racier Penthouse (Bob Guccione, 1969);

pornographic publications that would not be carried by mainstream newsagents.

The term "men's magazines" would mean the latter two groups. many more of these were launched, focusing on smaller, and weirder, niches. In May 1982, Executive came along as a Playboy-style title "For the man of today" from Fragilion with editor Brian Keogh, but failed. 

However, in the mid-1980s, things were stirring. Many editors and publishers found themselves at some stage discussing the possibility of a general interest title for men over a pint after work. It was a boom time, with champagne bars opening all over the City of London. Men were staying single longer and had more cash to spend, particularly on clothes and toiletries. They could turn to Viz for a laugh (and did, its sales hitting almost a million), Q for music and one of a dozen daily papers for sport and news. However, the "new man" had nowhere to find fashion and grooming, and coverage of sex and relationships that was to be found in the women's weeklies and glossies. "Lifestyle" was becoming important, more men were reading their partner's favourites, yet many did not want to be seen with top-shelf magazines. So some titles began to explore the gap.

Exploring the gap Back to top

By the mid-1980s, there was undoubtedly some kind of a market among men for a magazine. It was addressed by newspaper supplements and the big publishers through supplements or special sections in the women's glossies, which found up to a quarter of their readers among men. Cosmo Man was revived as a supplement and Options Man appeared, while both Elle and Harpers & Queen had dedicated sections in each issue. Yet none of the big guns really got to grips with the issue. It was left to a much smaller publisher, who just went with his gut instincts to make the significant move.
In 1980, Nick Logan had launched The Face, using £12,000 he raised by mortgaging his house (Emap had turned the idea down). It called itself "a visual-orientated youth culture magazine" and was the sort of magazine he wanted to read. He had edited New Musical Express for IPC and invented Smash Hits for Emap. This background showed in the music focus of the early issues. It was in the right place - and had the right designer in Neville Brody - to become the "house magazine" of the New Romantics, Boy George and the clubbing scene. By the late 1980s, The Face had become a style bible for the under-25s and was selling 88,000 copies a month. Other style titles, Blitz and i-D had come along. IPC tried to get in on the act with the short-lived,The Hit in 1985. Rupert Murdoch's News International magazine division got in on the act with a pan-European youth magazine Sky, in a joint venture with French group Hachette, led by publisher Peter Jackson. This started out as a fortnightly for 16 to 25-year-olds in February 1987, but failed to meet a 200,000 sales target and was cut back to a monthly in November. Its audience was refined to 18 to 22-year-olds. (Murdoch was to pull out of magazine publishing, and the Hachette partnership, which included Elle, was taken up with Emap, until it was dissolved in 2002. Sky closed in 2001)

However, male readers who grew too old for The Face still hadnowhere to go, so Logan thought up Arena as a quarterly, niche title, with an editorial mix of fashion, fads and fiction, and again designed by Neville Brody. It hit the streets in 1986.

Peter Howarth, a later Arena editor, has said there was no conscious decision to make a male version of existing women's magazines. "Nick Logan, launched The Face in 1980 because it was a magazine he wanted to read. But six years on he wanted to read a different magazine because he had moved on - as had all The Face readers - so he decided to do a men's magazine. It was never really a gap in the market; he just wanted to make the sort of magazine he wanted to read." 

In November 1988, the strain of having a second title led Logan to sell 40 per cent of his company, Wagadon, to Vogue publisher Conde Nast. He said at the time: 'The magazines are still under our control. But the deal will allow us to grow at a natural pace, knowing there's a cushion of support under us. It also takes away the administrative burden, which has doubled since the launch of Arena."

Arena was selling 66,500 copies an issue and was a spur for Conde Nast to launch the British edition of GQ a year later. However, Logan denied being formally involved.

One other title had been around since 1985, For Him. Chris Astridge had started this with distribution through men's fashion outlets. Distribution was expanded to newsagents as a quarterly in the spring of 1987. It was very fashion based and tended to be seen as a gay magazine, which was then a turn-off for other men. 

Another attempt to crack the market was made by White Line Publishing with Excel in April 1988. However, its main coverline "How to spot a bullshitter" led to its advertising being banned on the London Tube and the editorial mix under Rod Fountain was seen as too yuppy and it soon folded (although the title would be used again more than once in the next decade). 

The plethora of top-shelf magazines led to a campaign against them, led by Labour party politician Clare Short (who was to become a minister in Tony Blair's government, until she fell out over the Iraq war and resigned in 2003). 

The mainstream sector was given a boost by the arrival of the big guns, initially in the form of Conde Nast with GQ in late 1989 and National Magazines' Esquire in 1991. Arena went bimonthly just after GQ's launch (as a bimonthly) with sales of 70,000. 

GQ was regarded as a great success story in the US. It began as a fashion supplement to Esquire, in 1957 and under Art Cooper's editorship from 1983 (he died in June 2003), it grew to outsell its parent with monthly sales of 700,000 and advertising revenue of $40m. 

In the UK, GQ started out under editor Paul Keers with a straight interpretation of the US magazine's original name: Gentleman's Quarterly. Keers had formerly worked on Cosmo Man. His cover 'babe' was Conservative politician (and founder of publisher Haymarket) Michael Heseltine. (There was a certain irony here, given Heseltine's failed attempt to address the men's market almost 30 years earlier.) The first issue sold 90,000 copies, suggesting a settle-down figure of about 63,000. The company's target was 50,000.

Most of Arena's readers were under 30, with GQ aiming for men in their mid- to late-thirties with enough money to attract top-quality advertisers. 

Stephen Quinn, GQ's publisher, identified economic and political factors in making the launch possible: 'There are indications that the time and mood is right. Mrs Thatcher seems to have re-invented this enterprise culture in Britain that has led to a growth of business success which has required more professional men to service it.' The target readers would have more disposable cash to spend after the recent lowering of the top rate of income tax. Interestingly, Quinn had moved from National Magazine to Conde Nast in 1987 after a rumoured launch of Esquire in the UK had fallen through.

The Financial Times reported that US GQ had "had a little problem around 1980 when it flirted with the gay market, but a new publisher soon put a stop to that". So Keers and Quinn went for a resolutely macho image. Getting it right was tricky, however. Keers argued that being super-macho wouldn't dissuade anyone from sampling the first issue but later felt that it was "over masculine" with features on boxing, dog fighting and the Cresta Run. Although he added: "It would have concerned us a great deal more if we'd been too effeminate." Along with the fashion coverage, he was looking for gritty issues, such as testicular cancer and innocent men being accused of rape. 

As well as having to avoid a gay stereotype, the men's titles had to avoid being seen as what had been up to then "men's magazines" - the pornographic titles. So both Arena and GQ continued with men on the cover, including actors John Hurt and Terence Stamp, and high-achievers such as broadcaster John Birt, musician Peter Gabriel and writer Martin Amis. 

By issue seven, GQ had its second editor, Alexandra Shulman. It continued an all-male cover policy and cover lines had become more aggressive: a full-face image of Sean Connery was graced with the cover line "Are you hard enough" (February 1991). Yet, a couple of months later, it ran what was probably the most boring men's magazine cover of all time - of Tory prime minister John Major (April 1991). 

Meanwhile, For Him hardened up its editorial approach to compete in the expanding market and introduced a sports supplement. It went monthly and changed its name to FHM. 

This coincided with the arrival of the next entrant: Esquire in March 1991 from Cosmopolitan publisher National Magazines. It was another US import with Lee Eisenberg as editor-in-chief and Alex Finer as editor. Unusually, it had a woman on the cover, but it was a late-1950s photograph of Brigitte Bardot.  

By mid-1993, the leading two were heading for 100,000 sales a month: GQ (94,084); Arena (90,790); Esquire (74,771); and FHM (no certified figure, but estimated at 60,000 under editor Francis Cottam). Competition for advertising came from newspaper supplements, such as The Sunday Times Magazine and the Daily Mail's You.

However, these were refined titles, very upmarket and based on fashion, that could not command broad appeal, in the way that the likes of Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire could do among women. 

Loaded: the lad's Mag

Loaded was that rare type of magazine - it created a genre, knocking the titles that existed into a niche. It saw itself as "the antidote to the snooty fashion-based publications of the time." However, IPC failed to invest in the title and take it in to the international arena. Furthermore, one of the titles it first eclipsed was to bite back, albeit under a new publishing company.

In May 1994, IPC launched Loaded. Its unselfconscious, irreverent style defined a 'laddish' culture that was ground-breaking and was to reverberate around the world. On television, the same laddish element was seen in BBC programmes such as the sitcom Men Behaving Badly, the sports quiz They Think It's All Over and the irreverent news quiz Have I Got New for You (in which one of the teams was led by Private Eye magazine editor Ian Hislop). Other TV presenters and stand-up comics were part of the trend, such as Paul Merton and Frank Skinner (who was featured on the cover of issue 6 - 'Nudge, nudge, wink, wink: Frank Skinner's world of smut'). 

Editors are, by nature, individualists who tend to react badly to strait jackets. They will use their own language and terminology. In fact it is their attitude and style that may be the difference between a top titles and an also-ran. Loaded's founding editor James Brown brought in attitude by the bucketful. His regular editor's letter was entitled "page three", a reference to the Sun tabloid newspaper, which had become famous for its topless women on that very page. In the first issue of Loaded, Brown wrote: "What fresh lunacy is this? Loaded is a new magazine dedicated to life, liberty and the pursuit of sex, drink, football and less serious matters. Loaded is music, film, relationships, humour, travel, sport, hard news and popular culture. Loaded is clubbing, drinking, eating, playing and eating. Loaded is for the man who believes he can do anything, if only he wasn't hungover."

Of course, this is too long for a front cover, so it became "For men who should know better." There were variations on this: "For men who should know letter" for a July 1995 cover on David Letterman; and "...snow better" for the January 1995 cover showing Santa being knicked. 

The nature of its success can be seen in the sales figures. The first issue sold 59,400 copies and Loaded broke the 100,000 sales barrier with its ninth issue. Its first audited yearly sales figure was 96,000 - and this rose by 82% to 174,763 for the period Jul-Dec 1995.

Loaded deputy editor Tim Southwell described the magazine's early days in his book Getting Away with It (Ebury, 1998).

The Rise of FHM

As IPC was preparing to launch Loaded,  Emap bought the 76,000-circulation fashion title FHM from small publisher Tayvale and Mike Soutar set about the relaunch with publisher David Hepworth. He developed ways of differentiating his title from the then market-defining Loaded through taking a very practical approach. In his view, Loaded offered readers the chance to live life through the writers as they "drink and snort their way through endless freebies". Arena and GQ seemed "impossibly cool for the average bloke".

He took Brown's philosophy, but added a dimension; everything in FHM had to be accessible to readers. In a Guardian interview (17 February 1997, page 7), he espoused a "mantra" that everything in the magazine had to be: "funny, sexy, useful". Writers could never cover any activities that readers couldn't also take part in. So phone numbers and addresses were to be found at the end of most articles. In retrospect, this sounds simple, but Soutar's relaunch was in a highly competitive sector, in which IPC, Conde Nast and National Magazines were already active.

And more competition had arrived from Dennis's Maxim (Aug 95) - with Gill Hudson as editor - and Rodale's US-import Men's Health (David Hale, Feb 95), as well as Arena launching the bi-annual Hommes Plus as a spin-off, effectively going to eight issue a year.

 

The advent of women

The women's magazine Cosmopolitan had established the selling power of articles about sex and married this to regular 'centrefolds'. These were so successful that a pin-up magazine was launched by Portland in 1992, For Women, covering 'What they don't show you in Cosmo'and describing itself as 'the magazine for the sensual woman'. Bite from the sex shop and party group Ann Summers followed the next year. Bite did not last long but For Women - 'Raunchy, sexy magazine for women' - is still published (Fantasy).

Yet the new men's magazines were reluctant to tar themselves with the same brush as 'top shelf' magazines, from companies such as Northern & Shell. So women were slow to creep on to the covers of the lads' titles. Despite the racy image they now have, in some cases making it difficult to see the difference between men's lifestyle and top-shelf publications, only one of the mainstream titles had a woman on the front cover when it launched: Esquire used a 30-year-old photograph of French actress Brigette Bardot. 

A couple of photographs of up-and-coming actress Elizabeth Hurley, an article on hotel sex and a competition to win a dirty weekend in Brighton's Grand Hotel (scene of the IRA's bomb attack on Margaret Thatcher's Conservative party a decade earlier) were as far as the first issue of Loaded went.

However, under its third editor, American Michael VerMeulen, GQ, by now fighting with Arena to be the "male fashion bible", found excuses to smuggle women on to its covers: February 1993 saw French actress Juliette Binoche in a clinch with Jeremy Irons, both stars of the film Damage. 'Sex, love and obsession' was the cover line. Then, January 1994 saw the results of a reader survey used as the excuse for a bikini-clad woman on the cover. 

By 1996, the lads' mags were running so far away in terms of sales that the 1996 media pack for GQ doesn't even mention them and compares itself only with Arena, Maxim and Esquire. Arena quoted a "sex index" from the Independent newspaper on the previous November of the number of pictures of women half dressed or less: Arena had just nine, compared with 23 for GQ and 34 for Maxim. "Sometimes it pays to have smaller figures" was its conclusion.

The men's lifestyle market grew by almost half from Jul-Dec 1995 to Jul-Dec 1996. In that time, Loaded's sales grew by over 85%. Yet even this was not enough to outshine FHM: its sales more than doubled to 365,341. It was now rivalling the best-selling women's monthlies. By the end of 1999, FHM was selling 775,000 copies in the UK, and had been launched in five countries.

A Maturing Market

The men's lifestyle magazine market, though not mature in terms of sales, was splitting into two sub-sectors: the mass-market titles FHM and Loaded, both with a median age of 23, and more upmarket titles with older readerships (Arena, GQ, Maxim and Esquire, with median ages of 24, 25, 25 and 26). In addition there were niches, based around health, fashion and sport. Several of the men's titles launched spin-offs, particularly on fashion. Loaded even took its attitude too far with the short-lived Eat Soup (Oct 96), a food title.

Viz and Fortean Times publisher John Brown came up with Bizarre (Mar/Apr 96). The main selling point of this was a 10-page section of bizarre images and news.

However, the next wave went straight for the jugular in exploiting the pin-up side of the market. Escape in 1996, from Maxim publisher Dennis, explored the World-Wide Web in 1996. The first issue was withdrawn for legal reasons. Jennifer Aniston was on the cover. Along the same lines, but going further, was the bi-monthly X-Net in 1997, which came with a CD-Rom and a cover price of £7.95. It featured the popular pin-up Jo Guest, carried hundreds of addresses for pornographic websites and claimed sales of 30,000 for the first issue. It caused a furore in April, to which its editor, Dominic Handy, responded: "We did not go out to publish a porn mag, we wanted to publish Loaded for the internet."

Later from IPC, took Loaded's strategy to a 30-plus readership; and Front from Cabal (Nov 98) carried plenty of cleavage, boasting a "3D babefest poster". The latter was labelled as "Loaded for teenagers". This led to criticism, given the semi-pornographic nature of men's magazines by now. The building society Nationwide refused to advertise; and supermarkets Sainsbury's and Asda returned 24,000 copies of the launch issue. However, Cabal said the whole 400,000 print run was sold. Men's Quest from Blue Sky Brands went for older men as its prime readers but failed to achieve the critical mass needed.

Most launches at this stage were in niche areas. By the end of 1999, the "big three" FHM, Loaded and Maxim, accounted for about three-quarters of the market by sales value. Then there were six titles, GQ, Front, Bizarre, Esquire, Later and Arena, mopping up most of the rest, leaving a dozen or so titles to fight over about 1% of the market. 

The short-lived publishing group Mollin had a strategy of licensing magazines from the US. It sought a slice of the Men's Health market with Men's Fitness in July 1996. This had a then-fashionable monochrome cover with a flourescent orange ink for the masthead. Its tagline reflected the attitude of the time: ‘Get fit or feel s**t.’ Mollin folded and the title was taken over by Dennis, though it has remained a long way behind the market leader. The big publishers tried to break into the health sub-segment, mainly with spin-offs: GQ Active, ZM (Aut/Win 98, Paul Colbert, from National Magazines, whose Cosmo health and beauty spin-off Zest was launched in Autumn 1994), FHM Bionic and ESQ (Esquire Sports Quarterly) and US import Men's Journal (Wenner Media). These met with limited success against Men's Health.

Among those that came and went quickly were Level (April 1999, 4130 Publishing, under Chris Quigley); two US imports Gear and Bikini.

John Brown Publishing, then owners of Viz and Bizarre came up with the short-lived Cream (winter 1998); like the latter but with a higher "babe" content.

Cabal followed IPC in tackling the "post-Loaded generation" with Mondo, though like Later, this folded in 2001. In the same year, Ice appeared from its eponymous publisher. Its covers were indistinguishable from top-shelf titles.

Gadgets, a mainstay for the monthlies and supplements, also sparked launches, some with women draped over them. These included T3 (Future, Nov 96), Stuff (Dennis, bi-monthly, Dec96) and Boys Toys (Freestyle, bi-monthly Mar 99). 

For men who saw themselves as even more upmarket of Arena, Wallpaper appeared in London, from Tyler Brule (Sep/Oct 96). Its Canadian founder sold it to Time Inc in June 97. Time backed Brule in another launch in 2000. This was Line, a sports gear fashion magazine. It was notable for having two covers, one showing a man, the other a woman. However, it did not last long. He left after Wallpaper was put under the control of IPC, which AOL-Time Warner had bought in 2001, to concentrate on his consultancy, Wink Media, and freelance writing, including a column in the Saturday Financial Times. 

The "big three" saw a more upmarket fashion niche as well, launching Arena Homme Plus, FHM Collections and Loaded Fashion. These met with limited success.

However, a backlash was starting against the flesh-driven nature of FHM and Loaded. Nick Logan's Wagadon was first to react with Deluxe (May 1998). Editor Andrew Harrison introduced the concept: "Deluxe is here because a group of people got tired of being told that the same clapped-out subjects were the be-all and end-all of men's interests. They got bored of pro-celebrity shark-fishing and Z-list actresses in their knickers. The world is more interesting, and more complicated, than all that..." Music was a mainstay of the title and Pulp's Jarvis Cocker was on the first cover. Unfortunately, the new mix did not work. Despite a redesign (including a move from stapled to a more upmarket perfect-bound cover) and a bigger "babe factor" the magazine failed to work up towards a 150,000 sales target. It closed at issue 8 (jan/Feb 1999) with sales of less than 80,000. The main cover lines were: "She wants you sex: your girlfriend's filthy fantasies" and "Mine's a vodka and Red Bull. Davina Murphy will see you now..." with the semiclad Hollyoaks actress on the cover. Even worse, the failure of this and its women's magazine Frank was to drain Wagadon, which sold out to Emap six months later.

And March 1999 saw a line drawn in the sand, at Conde Nast's GQ. Editor James Brown (ex-Loaded) was sacked after 18 months, despite a 12% rise in sales, supposedly for featuring Rommel in a piece on stylish men. The cover theme was "Sex and Violence: Special issue on men's twin obsessions with 24 pages of erotica". The model Caprice was photographed for the  cover with airbrushed nipple and wearing nothing but slingbacks and diamond-encrusted handcuffs. The Guardian quoted a Conde Nast source: "We wanted GQ to be a mixture of good writing with a bit of sex... Unfortunately, we had a little too much of the latter and not enough of the former. It was too downmarket; this was the final straw." Managing director Nicholas Coleridge said: "James brought energy and humour to the editorial mix. Unfortunately philosophical differences have arisen." 

During his period of enforced rest, Brown became increasingly critical of men's titles. He accused them of being formulaic, lacking intelligence and too reliant on pin-ups. At about the same time as Brown was being shown the door, Ego took up the challenge as a serious men's magazine (Portfolio, with Marie Sim'one as editor). "Ego has landed at WHS" read its advertising campaign; unfortunately, it wasn't able to stay long. However, a model had landed and stayed the course: Untold. This bi-monthly was aimed at black men (Jun/Jul 98). Editor Peter Akinti persuaded government minister Paul Boateng, comedian Lenny Henry, athlete Linford Christie and designer Ozwald Boateng to model for the first issue cover.

As the memory of the millennium celebrations faded, so pressures began to mount on the sector. Early 2001 saw Mondo and Later close. Cover-mounts and marketing had become increasingly competitive, particularly between FHM and Loaded. Sales growth was slowing, and was to turn down. The publishers responded by bribing readers to keep sales up and maintain their advertising revenues. “If you haven’t got a cover-mount you are invisible,” said one editor. Publishers also expressed concern at the selling of magazines in bulk at cut rates, which were used increasingly to inflate ABC sales figures.

The press reported a source close to Cabal as criticising the company for launching Mondo with a print run in excess of 200,000 but without enough promotion. “It should have been launched on a small, cult level where they just let people discover it,” he said. The older, supposedly more sophisticated readers seemed to be disappearing. This was hitting Esquire in particular, which  saw its circulation fall 39 per cent to about 61,000. The title had tried to maintain a male-only cover policy and had a running battle in the press with rival GQ over which title was lowering the tone of the market.

After bemoaning the state of the men's market, James Brown set up his own company, I Feel Good and launched film magazine Hot Dog. Then, in 2002, he put his reputation on the line in launching a men's quarterly, Jack. It took the A5 ‘handbag’ format popularised by the launch of women's glossy Glamour. It described itself as ‘an orgy of war, animals, fashion, genius and cool’ and ‘another great British men’s mag with lions instead of lager.’ However, it failed to achieve substantial sales and, with an ABC of about 33,000 copies, IFG was taken over by Dennis in autumn 2003. Jack was relaunched for its November issue in a larger, sub-A4, format (176mm wide by 255mm - 8mm wider and 29mm taller). However, this did not work either and Jack closed innAugust 2004, selling fewer than 40,00 copies.

Later in the year, Nine was launched for black men. This was "committed to producing an innovative, contentious and provocative publication". "We are about wine, women and song," bringing "some of the hottest black women Britain has to offer".

Another attempt at a more cerebral brand, though one that took the theme of a pub at its core, was bimonthly Snug  (Nov 2002, Licensed Publishing). The catchline "A haven for drinkers and thinkers" called readers to this title, which the editor described as "a magazine from a pub". Its menu of sport, politics, religion, health, fashion and travel was a refreshing change from the bimbo-infested launches. Jarvis Cocker was the cover interviewee. However, it lacked the professional backing to succeed.

Word, which hit the streets in early 2003, oozed professionalism. Its publishers, Development Hell, included ex-Emap executives David Hepworth, Jerry Perkins, Mark Ellen and Andrew Harrison. Nick Cave was on the cover and inside was an interview with Maxim publisher Felix Dennis. Towards the end of the year, Sour Mash arrived from a new publisher, Mash Communications, which was formed by former IPC executives. How well its blend of Viz, Heat and Loaded would work, only 2004 would tell. Then in 2004, Sorted was launched aiming at teenage boys. It only lasted a few issues.

As the table below shows, however, sales over the sector were spread among a range of titles, the Audit Bureau of Circulations listing 16 titles in the men's sector. FHM had retrenched, but was way ahead of the rest. The fate of three, The Face, Arena and Esquire must hang in the balance. The first two had begun to wilt under the FHM and Loaded onslaught while at Wagadon and have continued to slide under Emap.

Taking over the world

Despite the success of Loaded, IPC lacked the ambition to launch it overseas. It was undoubtedly distracted by corporate restructuring and the need to cut investment to boost short-term profits. In January 1998 Cinven, a venture capital firm, bought IPC from Reed Elsevier plc for £860 million. In July 2001, Time Inc bought IPC from Cinven for £1.15 billion.

So, Dennis Publishing, under founder Felix Dennis who was never slow to spot a trend, took Maxim to the US in 1997. Just like the UK industry before the launch of Loaded, American publishers were sniffy about the concept of the lad's mag. Sean Elder on the Salon website quoted Art Cooper, editor of GQ: "[Maxim] is aimed at losers... Their advertising is beer, underwear and condoms. I always wonder why there is so much condom advertising because their readers are all masturbators."

The success of the British titles inspired publishers around Europe and the rest of the world. Maxim and FHM were widely licensed. Munich-based German group Verlagsgruppe Jurg Marquard  launched CKM in Poland. The name comes, just like Maxim, from a type of machine gun, suiting the macho, laddish image. 

By September 1999, FHM was the top men's title in the UK, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia and Turkey, and was about to appear in France. And in February 2000, Ed Needham launched the US edition, out of what was then Emap Petersen Inc. Maxim had previously raised its "ratebase" (the guaranteed circulation on which its advertising rates were based) to 950,000, despite having lost editor in chief Mark Golin to rival Details - its response had been to hire former FHM editor Mike Soutar (though he was to return to the UK within a year to run IPC's men's stable, including Loaded and Wallpaper). In comparison, GQ and Esquire each promised just 650,000 sales and Details 475,000.

The detractors were soon scraping egg from their faces as Maxim went on to trounce all the established titles, more than tripling GQ's sales by 2003.

In April 2004, Maxim launched two Chinese editions (in Mandarin and Cantonese) - its 22nd and 23rd international editions. In all, it claimed a readership of 17 million and sales of nearly four million copies a month The Chinese editions are published jointly with the South China Morning Post.

Dennis used the Maxim brand in the US to spin off Maxim Fashion, and Maxim's "younger brother" Stuff (although the company had sold the UK original to Haymarket). It also used the brand on its music magazine Blender in 2002.

Into the digital world

Technology has long been an attraction for men and publishers have exploited it. Dennis had its first big success with a computer magazine, Computer Shopper, so it had the skills to try Blender, an interactive music magazine on CD-Rom (1995). IPC tackled the same ground with UnZip, based on content from New Scientist, NME and Vox. Neither of these lasted long, but it meant Maxim had the expertise to mount a CD-Rom on its cover in August 1995, its fourth issue, under editor Gill Hudson. Several other titles used CD-Roms or videos as cover mounts. Around the same time, US Penthouse got in on the act with Penthouse Virtual Photo Shoot - at £81! Northern & Shell,  publisher of the UK version of Penthouse, followed with Digital Dreams, a CD-Rom/magazine combination, though the content was as cheap as the price at £5.95. 

By this time, the Tim Berners-Lee's World-Wide Web was booming. IPC's Loaded was early in with UpLoaded.com (though this closed when IPC went cold on its ambitious web strategy). Escape (1995) and X-Net (1997) as noted , tried to exploit the pornographic side of the web, the latter with a CD-Rom also.

Enter from Pure Communications in 2000 was the last attempt at an interactive CD-Rom magazine. Under editor Sam Delaney (who had worked on Later), it featured "Britain's sexiest women... cavorting", including actress Amanda Holden. Men's mags have continued to use CDs and DVDs as cover-mounts.

Dennis used the success of its Maxim website to exploit the new picture messaging technology in 2003. Similarly, Emap set up the FHM Pub, manned by models behind the bar and professional darts players, as part of a mobile marketing event programme.

Playboy went on to more success on the web and through cable television. However, Bob Guccione's Penthouse failed to cope with the onslaught of  pornographic websites and magazines such as FHM and Maxim. Sales - which had been as high as 5 million copies a month - fell to a tenth of that. Guccione resigned as chief executive, and General Media, the division that published the title, filed for bankruptcy in August 2003. 

IPC and Emap gear up

IPC and Emap are the UK's top two magazine publishers. IPC has a history in women's weeklies going back to the 1930s. By 1980, it published 69 weekly and monthly titles, 22 of them for women. These included the top four for women, selling an average of more than 5 million copies a week. IPC was nicknamed  'Ministry of Magazines' because of its size. In 1987, it was given a kick up its rather sleepy backside by two German publishers, Gruner & Jahr and Bauer, with Best and Bella, respectively. However, it responded with Chat and Now. In May 97, G&J sold Here! to IPC, and it was merged with Now. In 2000, G&J withdrew from the UK, selling its titles to National Magazines. However, Bauer's Take a Break has become the UK's biggest-selling women's weekly at 1.2 million copies, eclipsing Woman and Woman's Own, which had led the field for half a century. IPC similarly lost pole position in the men's monthly market, after Loaded was overhauled by Emap's FHM.

In 1969, IPC had become part of by Reed Group Ltd, a newsprint, paints and wallpaper combine. However, Reed's corporate strategy led it to evolve into today's Reed-Elsevier, a global online group focused on business information and academic journals. As part of this strategy, Reed sold IPC to a group of venture capitalists in 1998, which in turn sold the company on to US group Time Warner in 2001. This three-year period is seen as one of consolidation, with a focus on profits in the run-up to the sale. Nuts was IPC's first big launch since the takeover by Time Warner. 

Emap started out as a local newspaper publisher (East Midlands Allied Press). It built up a consumer specialist and business magazine portfolio and gradually shifted the emphasis to consumer magazines and radio from the 1980s. As the publisher of FHM, it is top dog in the men's monthly sector. Furthermore, it built up expertise in the women's weekly sector with Heat and Closer (2002). The former, struggled until it was repositioned as a women’s celebrity weekly. Circulation rocketed and it won a string of awards. Emap has described Closer as its most successful launch yet.

Given the success of the men's monthlies and the experience of IPC and Emap in women's weeklies, ears pricked up when rumours of development projects for a men's weekly emerged in 2003. Emap's "Project Tyson" seemed to be first off the block, but IPC said the concept for Nuts had been under development as Project Tribal since autumn 2002.

Editor Phil Hilton, who had run IPC's Later, had rejoined IPC from Emap in March 2003. Later, IPC’s attempt to graduate lads from Loaded to a more mature read, had failed to catch on. Launched in 1999, it closed in June 2001 when sales were reported at below 50,000. The closure occurred during a month of carnage for new titles as Mondo and Nova also bit the dust. Hilton was up against another former IPC editor, Paul Merrill, who was lured from the successful women's weekly Chat in December to launch Zoo Weekly.

In an article in Press Gazette, IPC editorial director Mike Soutar said the men's monthlies were too laddish, putting off some potential buyers (this had been the reasoning behind launches such as Word, from start-up companies). Furthermore, the daily tabloid had lost male readers because 'newspaper strategies over the past 10 years have been to aggressively recruit female readers'. 

At stake for the two companies is the potential for a new market in men's weeklies. In the same way that Loaded and FHM built a market for men's monthlies with copy sales to rival - and beat - those of women's monthlies, such as Cosmopolitan, could IPC and Emap create titles for men in the mould of Woman, Now and Take a Break? The top women's weeklies have combined copy sales of almost five million; six of them sell more than 500,000 a week, with H Bauer's Take a Break having the magic formula to sel1 1.2m copies - more than double its nearest rival. The top women's weeklies (December 2003 ABC figures) were:

• Take a Break (H Bauer)....1,225,116
• That's Life (H Bauer) ...........592,036
• Now (IPC Media) ................590,544
• Chat (IPC Media) ...............575,585
• Woman (IPC Media) ...........571,482
• Heat (Emap) ........................565,484
• OK! (Northern & Shell) ........489,882

Emap and IPC said they are looking for sales of 150,000 or 200,000 a week. The first issue of Loaded sold 60,000 copies and FHM at one time rose to sell 600,000 a month. The weeklies may affect monthly sales, although Soutar's comments suggested this would not be the case, and they have had a revamp to draw them away from the newsier weeklies.

Nuts - 'first men's weekly'

In mid-January 2004, a million free copies of Nuts were given away at large branches of WH Smith and sent out with copies of media trade magazines. This was a risky strategy, given Emap's success in having taken the concept of the lad's magazine from IPC's Loaded and gone one better with FHM. Launch costs were estimated at £8m.

The next week's issue (23 January) was sold for 60p, half the aimed-for regular price.

Emap's Zoo Weekly

Emap followed a similar strategy to IPC, but a week later. Its first issue (dated 24 January) was free. Zoo did not reveal a cover price, but had 50p-off vouchers for the next four issues. The second issue cost £1, with a settle-down price of £1.20.

Building a new market

In an article in Press Gazette, IPC editor Paul Merrill said Zoo aimed at blokes 'enjoy a laugh'. He said research showed men wanted girls, football, conspiracy theories, jokes and reviews. He added: 'It's a massive advantage to us that we can get really topical stuff on the cover, which Nuts can't do... Their covers go early but we hold ours back.'

Merrill brought his sense of the bizarre with him from Chat, given the photograph of a woman's enormous tumour and a condom in the soup stories. The use of far more model shots - many topless - was a clear differentiator, which Nuts editor Phil Hilton had avoided, wanting to produce a magazine that could be read openly on a train and left lying around at home. 

By March, IPC was claiming the biggest-selling crown. Both titles continued to juggle with all aspects of the titles, including regular half-price offers and Zoo switched publication date to Tuesday (from Wenesday).

As the year progressed, word crept out of 'Project Sue' and 'Project Squint', both names for a men's weekly at H. Bauer. Also, the trade news on the new weeklies' sales was good. Zoo and Nuts registered official ABC circulation figures of 200,125 and 290,337 respectively. Unofficial figures showed Nuts was selling about 500,000 at its launch, though this dropped when the price rose. By October 2004, Nuts was charging £6,250 for the back cover advertising page.

Circulation news for the monthlies was not so good. Emap's FHM sold 573,000 a month, down 4.6% on the previous six months, while IPC's Loaded tumbled 10% to 235,000. Dennis closed Jack, which was originally launched by Loaded's founder editor James Brown.

On 12 August, H Bauer, the German publisher behind Take a Break and Bella released Cut. It took a different approach from IPC and Emap on the day that official circulation figures showed the existing titles averaged half-a-million sales a week in their first six months. The new title took 'the best' from newspapers and magazines (including Emap's Zoo). This strategy had been used by Dennis with The Week and the Guardian for several years with its Editor supplement. The first issue culled from 54 papers and 185 mags for a mix of news, humour, gadgets, quizzes, sport, cars and, of course, women, although the flesh count was refreshingly low.

Emap's Zoo responded with a 'new look', 108 pages and a price cut to 50p. Sports coverage was increased with two sections dedicated to football. IPC stuck to the high ground with a 16-page 'Babe vault' section (total pagination 92 + 16). However, a Guardian report suggested the relatively low-key launch of Cut did not go well. It suggested that fewer than 70,000 copies of the 700,000 distributed were sold. This was despite a launch price of just 50p.

Another publisher hopes to emulate the success of Zoo and Nuts. OK! and Daily Express owner Richard Desmond is planning his own weekly, KO! later this year. And back on the women's side of the fence, Emap is gearing up to launch a glossy fashion weekly based on Grazia, under licence from the Italian publisher, the Mondadori Group. Similarly, The National Magazine Company anounced in September 2004 that it was forming a partnership in the UK to produce weekly magazines with Australian Consolidated Press. ACP publishes Australia's best-selling weekly women's magazine, Women's Day, and Australian Women's Weekly (a monthly)

Credits: Written by Editor Tony Quinn at Magforum.com