Another print magazine decides to bite the dust and go online-only. Teen celeb and entertainment mag TVHits! will publish its last on dead-tree next week, October 4, to concentrate on its website, operator Essential Publishing announced. The £2.40 title got a 39,098 circulation in the January-to-June ABCs, a drop of around 8,000 on the previous period, while rivals have fared much better. By contrast, the website has fared better, claiming over 100,000 unique monthly users. This echoes the fate of Smash Hits, the teen music mag that also retreated from the sector after 28 years last year to focus on digital radio and TV output.
The reason given for the switch: “The readership are looking for an interactive source and were the first audience to migrate to the web … Topics can be covered in much greater detail without the frequency and pagination restraints of traditional media … Unique visitors to the site have grown enormously and have been far greater than the paper magazine