Bauer yesterday announced that it will next month print the last ever issue of Zoo Weekly on October 12, citing “tough retail conditions in the men’s market”.

For those who keep an eye on circulation figures the news isn’t really surprising. Last year, Fusion Strategy media analyst Steve Allen described its numbers as “terminal”. Bauer removed Zoo from circulation audits in May. In the previous audit it sold only 24,000 copies, a figure that, if the rate of decline continued, is now likely far lower. In May, Coles stopped selling the magazine after a change.org petition implored it to do so.

Bauer first launched Zoo in the UK in 2004 as a trashier, raunchier rival to IPC Media’s Nuts, which launched at the same time. Nuts’ last issue was published in April last year after heavy circulation declines, leading many to question whether the genre still had life in it. Zoo was expanded to Australia in 2006, with founding editor Paul Merrill, who’d also set up Zoo in the UK (he wrote a  fascinating tell-all book about the experience). Earlier this year, the magazine used the word “Anzac” without permission, and even earlier, it was successfully sued by Senator Sarah Hanson-Young after photoshopping her face onto a lingerie model’s body. Controversy has always been a key part of the Zoo market positioning. But more than 10 years after it launched, it appears outrage is no longer enough to move copies, at least not in Australia. The original Zoo in the UK survives — it was one of few magazines to post acirculation rise earlier this year.

The Australian reports Zoo Australia’s five staff are in discussions about redeployment or redundancy. The Oz also notes it’s far from the first magazine Bauer has closed in recent times.