New! and Star keep their place in Top 10

ABCs: New! and Star magazines continue to feature in the Top 10 actively purchased titles over the past six months as a result of a multi-pack promotion.

The latest ABC figures for the January to June period show that the top five titles has remain unchanged in the last 12 months with H Bauer’s TV Choice leading with net circulation of 1,309,469.

Northern & Shell’s New! and Star are up 47.5% and 41.9% respectively in the past year but the circulation of both titles dropped in the six months to June, New! by 2.3% and Star by 8.7%.

Star and New! infiltrated the Top 10 in the last set of results in February following an ongoing multi-pack promotion with sister title OK! designed to introduce the cheaper celebrity titles to recession struck readers.

OK has continued its slide down the Top 10 to 9th place with average circulation of 459,454, down 12.6% since December and down 16.4% year on year.

TV Choice and Condé Nast’s Glamour are the only titles in the Top 10 that grew their circulation in the past six-months. Glamour’s circulation was up 4.1% to 481,253 over the period and up 1.5% year on year. TV Choice was up 0.5% in the past six months, however its circulation slumped 2% compared with a year ago.

Bauer owned Heat and Reader’s Digest which both featured in the Top 10 a year ago have nudged further down the ABC table. Reader’s Digest, which fell into administration in February and was bought by equity house Better Capital for £13m in April saw circulation plummet 23.4% year on year, recovering slightly in the past six months down 16.7% to 402,290.

Heat fell 6.9% year on year and 9.4% over the six-month period to 409,081.

Nicky Holt, acting publisher of Heat, says: “As ever, Heat remains widely recognised as the reference point for all things celebrity. It’s unique and unrivalled heritage gives the brand an unparalleled level of engagement and interaction with its celebrity-obsessed audience in print, via heatworld.com, heat Radio and social media networks.”

The Top 10 are:

1: TV Choice,
2: What’s On TV,
3: Radio Times,
4: Take A Break,
5: Saga Magazine,
6: New!
7: Closer,
8: Glamour,
9: OK!
10: Star