But where will I get my info on 5ive, Eternal and Color me Badd?

Anyone remember "Fresh", the Irish version of Smash Hits. Dunno if that even lasted 2 years.

Norman, my hat is off to you

it's only in recent years that smash hits became 100% teeny-boyband orientated - in the 80s it had all sorts of music in it, both indie and mainstream, and it was a lot more mature in its target audience and writing. for instance, I remember the manic street preachers being heavily featured in it when they first emerged. a lot of people (me included) probably started on smash hits and then graduated to the melody maker (RIP too). however, I guess the image of it become a girly boyband magazine probably sunk it in the end.

Eh..I'd disagree with that. There'll always be a demand for hard copy, can't see anyone taking their tablet PCs into the bog

Interestingly this story also appeared in online IT geek tabloid The Register under the amusing headline "Internet Kills Smahs Hits!". Essentially the gist was that the former editor said that young kids weren't buying Smash Hits because they were getting their reviews online, Smash Hits will continue on the web. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Smash Hits has very little content, kids in that age group don't have a lot of disposable income compared to people in their mid teens to mid thirties. If they can get that kind of stuff free on the web, why bother? they can spend their limited cash on ringtones and videogames instead. Whats really interesting is how the print publishing world has reacted to the internet killing it's traditional business. Unlike the record industry which fears the net and ruthlessly attempts to preserve the status quo, the publisher in this case has simply accepted that the market has changed, adapted it's business strategy accordingly and moved on without making a fuss. If record companies were that adaptable, the horrible situation regarding internet file sharing simply would be nowhere near as bad and everyone, especially the record companies would be better off.

So you could say, I suppose, that its been "Smashed to Bits"... oh look.. an airplane!

From last Sat's Indo. I think John Meagher wrote it. How the age of the 'pap diva' finally killed the magazine star . . . THE final issue of 'Smash Hits' will be on newsstands next week. An icon of youth culture, it's end will be mourned. Once, an essential weekly digest for all pop aficionados, Smash Hits' demise has been slow and steady. Since its mid-1980s heyday - when it was Britain's best-selling magazine - it has lost 840,000 readers. The proliferation of on-line music websites has stolen its thunder while its fawning preoccupation with dull boy bands has robbed it of the tongue-in-cheek, even edgy, cachetit once had. The magazine's most successful years coincided with the explosion of colourful rock and pop stars in Thatcher's Britain. Duran Duran, Boy George, Gary Numan, Spandau Ballet, Paul Weller and Morrissey were not afraid to speak candidly and often used the magazine to poke fun at each other. A generation of gifted writers - whose number included future Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant - refused to patronise the magazine's young readership. The writing was sharp, funny and irreverent. Interviewees were lampooned - often to their faces - and lively copy ensured. In a celebrated interview, Margaret Thatcher - horribly misjudging the tenor of the magazine - revealed that her favourite record was not by Wham! or another of the hip acts of the day, but Lita Roza's 1953 novelty 'How Much is that Doggie in the Window?' "She was obsessed with free-market economics even as a child," the interviewer, Tom Hibbert, later wryly noted. Since the early 1990s, the magazine's focus changed in a bid to arrest the decline in popularity the other British weeklies NME an Melody Maker had also suffered. It started to celebrate mediocre, manufactured pop outfits to the detriment of the exciting guitar bands that had emerged and would sow the seeds of Britpop. Soon, no band that took itself seriously would want to be seen in a publication that seemed little more than a conduit for the Louis Walshs and Simon Cowells of the world. And where once it had playfully pierced pomposity, it lost the nerve to do it any more as record companies and PRs called the shots. It seemed to have all the energy and vitality focus-grouped out of existence. Young male readers were alienated as the magazine sought to increase its female readership. In short, it lost its way - and despite the launch of a Smash Hits music channel in 2001 - it couldn't arrest the decline. Its end was inevitable. It's not a good time for music magazines. Q is a pale shadow of its former self having turned into a gossip mag with occasional music. Mojo can often be deathly dull, with over-long articles to please the 40-something man. The NME's hysterical hype treatment, doled out to a new band seemingly every other week, has got tiresome. In Ireland, Hot Press continues to enjoy a monopoly but its standards have dipped. The album reviews - a bedrock of any music magazine - are frequently wide of the mark. Sadly, for a generation weaned on quirky, fun music writing, the fire has gone out of Smash Hits. But we still have some warm memories. h