EMAP offloads struggling Bliss

EMAP Consumer Media has sold teen title Bliss to Panini, the football sticker album business.

Market leading title Bliss has suffered a slide in circulation, with sales down 22.7% year on year in the six months to June, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). In 1997 it was selling more than 400,000 a month.

The sale follows the suspension of Sneak in August 2006, less than six months after Smash Hits was shut down. Rival Hachette Filipacchi closed Elle Girl in September 2005.

According to ABC figures the teen entertainment sector fell 22.5% in the six months to June 2006, with the teenage lifestyle sector down 18.6% in the same time.

The deal with EMAP, which is expected to complete in January, follows Panini’s purchase of Mizz from IPC in December last year. It will make Panini the UK’s second largest publisher of teenage and children’s magazines in the UK.

Panini says it will invest in both the magazine and website – www.mybliss.co.uk – with a view to consolidating its position as a market leading lifestyle magazine for 14- to 17-year-old girls.

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