8 Days and i-Weekly to cease print edition

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Trees would be happy to hear this. Both publications belonging to Mediacorp will go entirely digital and discontinue print copies in September. Hormonally charged teenage boys will have to find a new source of cut-outs.

The broadcast company also announced that it will stop publishing the local version of Elle and will shutdown parenting website SmartParents.

Mediacorp says that these moves are designed to refresh the two house magazines and allow the company to focus on its own lifestyle and entertainment content.

As for staff, the company will “retrain and redeploy affected employees to other jobs to various growth areas within the company” in the next 6 months.

Singapore is a challenging magazine market. The low barriers to entry and proliferation of both print and digital magazines had made the job of publishing very challenging and profits very thin. 

Earlier this year SPH announced that it would be shedding 230 staff by the end of the year. Advertising revenue at SPH fell by $103 million, or 16.9 per cent, while circulation revenue dropped by $8.7 million, or 5.1 per cent.

And for some nostalgia, 8 Days and i-Weekly itself came from Radio & TV Times that were hugely popular during the 80s. You’ll see these being tossed around barber shops and visits to your relative’s houses. You depended on them to know what was being aired on TV. 

This is truly the end of an era.

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