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August 25, 2005updated 22 Nov 2022 4:34pm

Nuts cracks its bitter rival

By Press Gazette

By Alyson Fixter

Nuts looks set to emerge overall winner of the battle of the lads’ weeklies after crashing through the 300,000 mark and pulling further ahead of its bitter rival, Emap title Zoo.

The IPC title has increased its lead over Zoo to 44,000 copies a
week, with an official figure of 304,751, compared to 260,317 for Zoo.
However, Zoo has increased its circulation by 30 per cent year-on-year
after initially selling far fewer copies than Nuts.

The ABC
results follow hot on the heels of a reshuffle at Emap which saw Zoo
launch editor Paul Merrill step aside to let Arena editor Anthony
Noguera take over the day-to-day running of the title.

Merrill
has now become international editor of Zoo, which launched in Spain
earlier this month and aims to mimic stablemate FHM in launching
multiple international editions.

Nuts editor Phil Hilton said: “This competition [with Zoo] has been the best incentive we could have had for our staff.

There’s been no need for motivational speeches.

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“Zoo
has changed around a lot, trying out different writers and different
ways of doing things, some of which weren’t so smart, and they’ve
suffered for that.”

He said of Merrill’s job change: “All I can
say is there aren’t many international editors around, but a lot of
mags have a lot of international editions.

“It will take Anthony time to get his head around a really different market.

“[The changes] make the competition all the more fun.”

Ben
Knowles, deputy editor of Zoo, said: “We’re excited about Anthony
joining us. He proved in his ten years at FHM, when he doubled the
circulation, that he’s probably Britain’s most successful men’s
magazine editor. We’re constantly reinventing what we do and I’m sure he will have plenty of new ideas.

“It’s really exciting working on Britain’s fastest-growing men’s magazine.”

Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog

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