ABSTRACT
In August 1997, The Independent devoted its main editorial column, as well as a half-page news story, to events in the UK men’s magazine market. The coverage marked a striking and significant moment in British media history. FHM had overtaken the women’s magazine Cosmopolitan to become the UK’s most popular monthly lifestyle title, selling over 500,000 copies per issue. At its peak the following year, FHM’s sales reached over 775,000, more than ten times that of five years earlier, while overall monthly sales of men’s lifestyle magazines, narrowly conceived, topped 2.3 million. FHM’s achievement was especially remarkable because, while general-interest magazines for women had flourished throughout the twentieth century and Cosmopolitan had been on British newsstands for twenty-five years, the equivalent sector for men had only been resuscitated in the late 1980s after twenty years of being labelled the ‘graveyard’ of magazine publishing.
