Bliss gains on Hachette's Sugar with 10% sales rise

Marcus Rich, managing director of Emap Performance, said: "Bliss is a true success in its sector and we aim to grow the title further. This ABC marks the smallest gap between Bliss and the market leader and we'll be looking to close that further as we aim to take Bliss to number one."

The National Magazine Company's CosmoGirl! has proved the winner in the battle of the "little sister" magazines, seeing its circulation rise by 6.6% over the past six months to 213,111 copies.

According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, rival teenage girls title Elle Girl, published by Hachette Filipacchi, had a circulation of 90,334 an issue in the six months ending December 2004.

It is the first ABC figure recorded by Elle Girl, which went monthly a year ago.

The only two teenage girls magazines to see their circulation fall for the period were IPC Media's Mizz and DC Thomson's Shout.

Mizz is in serious need of a turnaround, with its circulation figure of 70,320 showing it has dropped almost 30% over the year. Shout was down by 1.2% for the period to 67,466 copies, a figure 20.3% lower than in December 2003.

Teenage entertainment figures showed a marked improvement on the whole, although BBC Magazines' leading monthly, Top of the Pops, suffered a 7.4% fall in circulation over the period to record a figure of 200,907.

Smash Hits, published by Emap, was up by 4.5% over the period to sell 126,100 copies a fortnight, an improvement of more than 10% compared with the same time last year.

But its sister weekly celeb title, Sneak, did not show the same improvement, despite a revamp in October 2004. Its circulation was down 1.5% for the period to 90,946 copies, representing a year-on-year decline of 12.7%.

Elsewhere in the sector, BBC monthly magazine It's Hot rose by 11% for the period to 101,547 copies and Hachette's TV Hits, also a monthly title, recorded a period-on-period rise of 3.3% to 103,658 copies -- representing a decline of more than 20% on its December 2003 figure of 130,164.

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