Maxim Magazine

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 10:20pm on Saturday, April 4th, 2009

Maxim magazine is shutting down the UK print edition. The magazine will be available online only after the release of the June 2009 edition, the Guardian newspaper reported on April 2, 2009:

"Maxim, one of the titles synonymous with the mid-1990s lads' mag boom, is closing its UK print edition after 14 years and will become online only in Britain from next month.

The final UK issue of the Dennis Publishing title, the June edition, will be on sale from 23 April. The US edition will replace it on newsstands in the UK.

Maxim was launched by Dennis in 1995 as the company's entry into the then booming lads' mag market following the success of titles such as Loaded.

"The Maxim brand remains the best-selling men's lifestyle magazine in the world, but Dennis Publishing must move with the times and recognise that the future of the brand in the UK is online," said the publisher's chief executive, James Tye.

Maxim's circulation has been in a tailspin for several years, falling a massive 41.4% year on year in the second half of 2008 to just 45,951.

After Emap failed to get a joint venture to launch FHM in America with Dennis and Heart, Dennis launched Maxim in the US in 1997.

Despite a sniffy reaction from the US magazine establishment, the American edition was a monster success, with more than triple GQ's sales by 2003. Maxim still sells about 2.5m copies in the US."

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 1:04pm on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

On December 9, 2008, Folio magazine ran a story about Maxim and other "lad magazines":

"Britain’s MP Claire Curtis-Thomas is demanding that lad magazines be forced to carry cinema-style age ratings. Her Top Shelf report cites titles like Maxim, which are, she said, “little more than pornography and should be classified as such.”

The reason for the guidelines now, said Curtis-Thomas, is that many U.K. retailers are displaying lad magazines at the average height of a nine-year-old boy. The ratings system will indicate those magazines that should be displayed on the top shelf, out of reach (and sight) of children."