History Main / MagazineDecay

* This was welcome for ''N64 Magazine'', which slowly [[CompletelyMissingThePoint pushed its N64 coverage out in favour of the GameCube]]. Rather than go to all the hassle of launching a new magazine, the publisher just renamed it ''NGC'' and continued the issue numbering.

* ''Magazine/TVGuide'' was, for decades, a convenient source of regional program listings and articles about television; the program listing section made up the center of the magazine [[note]](the advertisements for the shows were probably as well-known as the shows themselves and are still remembered and discussed to this day)[[/note]]. The "shell" (typically 30 glossy, full-color pages) included news and commentary about television programming and drew widespread critical acclaim for its content — serious reporting on the industry and its programs rather than fluff pieces, celebrity gossip, etc. In October 2005, the magazine was completely overhauled, changing from its classic "digest" format to a tabloid-like size, and eliminating the 140 regional editions then in place with two (one for the Eastern and Pacific time-zones, one for the Central and Mountain time-zones). Due to the prevalence of on-screen program listings and the internet (and the sheer number of channels that sprang up at the TurnOfTheMillennium, which included an actual ''TV Guide Channel''), [[TechnologyMarchesOn the assumption was that people no longer needed a print magazine to find television schedules]]. The other major change was including fluff pieces, brief excerpts from interviews (which ultimately had little insight), photo spreads and celebrity gossip, the very content that — with very few exceptions — the "old" ''TV Guide'' strove to avoid.

* The Brazilian equivalent of ''Time'', ''Veja''. They used to be a standpoint of good journalism, especially as they started the same year the military dictatorship got stronger and censored the magazine copiously for about 15 years... but in the 2000s, it started being tarnished by both a right-wing political bias and questionable cover choices (which were at times done to avoid subjects they didn't want to talk about). Add that in 2012 the editors and journalists were accused of receiving influence of a convicted lobbyist... (on the other hand, the rise of an ill-prepared right wing politician up to the Brazilian presidency was not backed by ''Veja'', who continuously bash him, showing EveryoneHasStandards).

* Brazilian magazine ''Mundo Estranho'' was originally a spin-off of ''Superinteressante'' packed full of trivia and answering scientific questions; now it's focused on young readers, full of articles about sex and other things that would catch the eye of a teenage boy. There's still trivia in it, and for the most part, it's an enjoyable read but female readers complain a lot about the shift towards male interests.

** The Brazilian version was accused of decay for both fewer naked women (and an obsession for Suicide Girls-style tattooed pin-ups) and more pseudo-celebrities (about four ''Series/BigBrother'' contestants a year!), not to mention questionable cover choices (a surfer that some compared to Gerard Depardieu, and [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_YSfsaz6CVQ8/SwqrL24vn2I/AAAAAAAAAdE/X5Yp7ACpvkY/s1600/fernanda_young_playboy.jpg a female writer which had a pictorial dressed in a Playboy bunny costume]], image is SFW). As circulation fell due to both less captivating cover models and internet piracy, the magazine got shorter and with fewer articles. Add this to the expenses of paying royalties to Playboy Enterprises, the Brazilian publisher eventually decided to finish their ''Playboy'' in 2015, just before the magazine's 40th anniversary. Another company took over and decided to keep the nudity in the reborn magazine - only they would not pay women for it. It started to publish fewer editions per year, and ultimately in 2018 announced that following the Summer edition published that January, it would be sporadic and mostly online... until the publisher went under.

* ''{{Omni}}'' started as a magazine combining science fiction and science fact. The portion dedicated to science fiction started to shrink, however, until it was mostly science with only a little bit of fiction. Then it became more and more dedicated to the paranormal, with actual science being squeezed out. Then it died.

** ''Time'' '''artificially darkened''' the mugshot photo of OJ Simpson to make him seem scarier and were called out on it. [[Series/TheDailyShow Jon Stewart]] declared it the day Print Media "JumpedTheShark".

Then the owners of the ''National Enquirer'' and ''Star'' bought the magazine's ''RadarOnline'' website and were interested in launching a competitor to Perez Hilton, Jezebel, Gawker, and the numerous other gossip sites. The result is a site that's now your official and authoritative source to all things celebrity-related, including Octomom, Creator/LindsayLohan, [[Series/JonAndKatePlusEight Jon and Kate]], non-political coverage of UsefulNotes/SarahPalin, everything regarding Creator/MelGibson and his feud with his former girlfriend, and tons of random and pointless paparazzi footage [[note]](though they do occasionally cover non-celebrity stories, such as the Trayvon Martin murder and the 2012 Afghani civilian massacre)[[/note]]. The magazine eventually came back in 2011 under the title ''Radar Weekly'' which is very similar in style to celebrity mags like ''Star'', a far cry from Radar's roots, nevertheless, it quickly became TV's #1 new selling magazine.

* ''The Huffington Post'' started out as an online newspaper with the intention of presenting a new independent viewpoint. Although frequently chided for being mostly made up of Associated Press articles, its political section attracted some top-notch talent and the investigative side continues to produce great work. However, the front page became increasingly tabloid-like to try and attract viewers, with titles incorporating words like "SLAM", "BLAST", and "ATTACK" in all caps to try and dramatize stories while the headlines got larger and more sensational for the slightest of reasons. The site also has a habit of trying to dictate how its readers should behave with an overabundance of articles about what readers "should" buy, do, etc. while holding up various celebrities as examples of how to have the "perfect" birthday, wedding, birth announcement, etc. It eventually devolved into a messy mass of stories taken from wire services, blog posts from unpaid writers, and superficial listicles. And because most of the writers aren't paid for their work, many have started accepting money and gifts from various companies in exchange for writing positive product reviews disguised as legitimate articles.

However, the magazine's switch from a glue binding to staples and a thinner, glossier paper in January 1998 (a literal decay, as the staple-bound issues aren't as durable as the glue-bound) coincided with the narrowing of its scope to the point that it became yet another facet of Disney's marketing department, but soon after it became reduced to featuring puff-pieces about popular non-Disney characters like ''Literature/HarryPotter'' and ''WesternAnimation/SpongebobSquarepants'' because of the company's [[DorkAge inability to create popular new characters]] at the TurnOfTheMillennium, as pointed out by Roy Disney, Jr. (Walt's nephew) in an article for his "Save Disney" web site in 2004, reflecting poorly on the company's overall creative health at the time. After Michael Eisner was forced out in 2005, ''Disney Adventures'' was quietly and gradually phased out, putting out its last issue in November 2007. That last issue featured interviews with Creator/PattonOswalt, Creator/MileyCyrus, Creator/JerrySeinfeld, and Creator/AmyAdams, as well as a ''WesternAnimation/{{Ducktales}}'' comic that appeared in the first issue and a collage of all the issues that came before.

* The country music magazines ''Country Music'' and ''Music City News'' decayed not because they stuck primarily to their original purpose (intelligent news and commentary about country music, frank album reviews, and such) but because they skewed in later years to older audiences who didn't accept many of the younger artists (in particular, Garth Brooks) as legitimate country performers. Meanwhile, weekly and semi-weekly publications (most notably ''Country Weekly'') emerged that ''did'' appeal to the 18-39 age demographic. While ''Country Weekly'' (later ''Nash Country Weekly'') did carry stories and features about pre-1990s artists regularly until it moved to web-only in April 2016, only one magazine — ''Country Music Greats'' — caters primarily to fans of classic country artists.

* The Brazilian equivalent of ''Time'', ''Veja''. They used to be a standpoint of good journalism, especially as they started the same year the military dictatorship got stronger and censored the magazine copiously for about 15 years... but in the 2000s, it started being tarnished by both a right-wing political bias and questionable cover choices (which were at times done to avoid subjects they didn't want to talk about). Add that in 2012 the editors and journalists were accused of receiving influence of a convicted lobbyist... (on the other hand, the rise of an ill-prepared right wing politician up to the Brazilian presidency was not backed by ''Veja'', who continuously bash him, showing EveryoneHasStandards)

* ''Seventeen'' began in 1944 as a fashion magazine for teen girls, true enough, but with enough intelligent content to separate it from its rivals. Creator/SylviaPlath got her start at ''Seventeen'' when they published her short story, "And Summer Will Not Come Again", in 1950. There was even a time when the magazine encouraged girls to be happy with the shape their body had taken, instead of shoving stick-thin models as an "ideal" down their throat. Even at the peak of the "valley girl" in the 80s, it was still highly-regarded--By the mid-1990s however, the rise of "bimbo" magazines in the vein of ''Tiger Beat'' led to a sharp decrease of circulation, leading to the "dumbing-down" of the publication. During the late 2000s and early 2010s, it became chiefly known as "the ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' rag", while it later became obsessed with pop divas. All that jazz about loving your body whatever its shape? Pfft. Those real-life "it happened to me" stories that used to get featured and even blurbed on the cover? They've been reduced to a single page and less than 100 words. Fortunately, ''Seventeen'' stopped featuring Photoshop-retouched pictures of girls [[http://mashable.com/2012/07/03/seventeen-real-girls-petition/ after an internet petition in 2012]].

* One notable example is ''Twist''. In the 1990s, it was more varied; sure it discussed celebrities, but it also had real-life stories and other various features. Nowadays, it's a ''Tiger Beat'' clone.
* Another example is ''J-14'', a magazine geared towards pre-teens which used to have stories about teens (usually about embarrassing moments or tragedies) and strongly rebelled against the "thin" body type other magazines gave out. Nowadays, it focuses on celebrities like Music/MileyCyrus, Music/SelenaGomez, Music/DemiLovato, etc. along with teen gossip, quizzes, and fashion-related articles; those all used to be part of the magazine, but now they're much more emphasized and the teen stories and self-help articles soon vanished.
* An inversion of the usual order would be ''Teen Vogue'', which started in 2003 as, well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin a teenage version]] of ''Vogue''. In 2016, it hired a new editor and editorial director, and while it's still a fashion/celebrity magazine at its core, it joined the trend of for branching out into political journalism from a teen POV (most notably an [[http://www.teenvogue.com/story/donald-trump-is-gaslighting-america incendiary op-ed]] by Lauren Duca criticizing President-Elect UsefulNotes/DonaldTrump in 2016), meeting with both [[https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/12/teen-vogue-politics/510374/ surprise]] and [[http://www.avclub.com/article/users-guide-teen-vogue-which-suddenly-good-246652 acclaim]] from old-guard journalists and pundits, as ''Teen Vogue'', a magazine whose very name would seem to indicate lightweight fluff, gossip, and fashion tips, would be exactly the last place one would find the in-depth political commentary of its peers in 'serious' journalism.

However, the magazine's switch from a glue binding to staples and a thinner, glossier paper in January 1998 (a literal decay, as the staple-bound issues aren't as durable as the glue-bound) coincided with the narrowing of its scope to the point that it became yet another facet of Disney's marketing department, but soon after it became reduced to featuring puff-pieces about popular non-Disney characters like ''Literature/HarryPotter'' and ''WesternAnimation/SpongebobSquarepants'' because of the company's [[DorkAge inability to create popular new characters]] at the TurnOfTheMillennium, as pointed out by Roy Disney, Jr. (Walt's nephew) in an article for his "Save Disney" web site in 2004, reflecting poorly on the company's overall creative health at the time. After Michael Eisner was forced out in 2005, ''Disney Adventures'' was quietly and gradually phased out, putting out its last issue in November 2007.

* Magazine/NickelodeonMagazine during the 90s and early 2000s featured lots of articles on things kids might find interesting or bizarre, interviews with popular stars at the time, comics, and content related to the channel. Approaching the end of their initial run in 2010, the magazine became a lot thinner and became 99% comics, not restricting them to one section of the magazine anymore and appearing more like the separate Nickelodeon Comics magazines. There was also lots of WolverinePublicity for ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' around this time, since it's the network's most popular series. Might be justified since those issues sold better than the others.
** A revival of the magazine launched in 2015 under the publisher Papercutz. It was still fairly thin, mostly just contained comics based on Nicktoons, and cut many beloved aspects of the magazine such as the original comics or the canine mascot Zelda Van Gutters. It only lasted eleven issues.

* Magazine/{{Nickelodeon Magazine}} during the 90s and early 2000s featured lots of articles on things kids might find interesting or bizarre, interviews with popular stars at the time, comics, and content related to the channel. Approaching the end of their initial run in 2010, the magazine became a lot thinner and became 99% comics, not restricting them to one section of the magazine anymore and appearing more like the Nickelodeon Comics separate magazines. There was also lots of WolverinePublicity for ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' around this time, since it's the network's most popular series. Might be justified since those issues sold better than the others.

Nowadays, they actually show fewer naked women than they used to--the announcement in 2015 that, starting the following year, they would no longer have nude models (mostly because the magazine itself was not as important as its digital forays, which had some distribution problems[[note]]For starters, Apple refused to carry the Playboy app due to nudity[[/note]]) was merely the culmination of a long trend. But when that backfired, however, the nudes returned to the magazine in 2017, although only for the centerfold, and much softer. After Hugh Hefner died that year, the magazine changed course with a new management led mostly by young women, who have improbably revamped ''Playboy'' into a female-friendly, politically-outspoken publication. In 2020, it was announced ''Playboy'' would become chiefly a web portal (with special print editions, a decision hastened by the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic making it basically impossible to produce and distribute a physical magazine.
** The Brazilian version was accused of decay for both "fewer naked women" (and an obsession for "Suicide Girls"--tattooed pin-ups) and "more pseudo-celebrities" (about four ''Series/BigBrother'' contestants a year!), not to mention "questionable cover choices" (a surfer that some compared to Gerard Depardieu, and [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_YSfsaz6CVQ8/SwqrL24vn2I/AAAAAAAAAdE/X5Yp7ACpvkY/s1600/fernanda_young_playboy.jpg a female writer which had a pictorial dressed in a Playboy bunny costume]], image is SFW). As circulation fell due to both less captivating cover models and internet piracy, the magazine got shorter and with fewer articles. Add this to the expenses of paying royalties to Playboy Enterprises, the Brazilian publisher eventually decided to finish their ''Playboy'' in 2015, just before the magazine's 40th anniversary. Another company took over and decided to keep the nudity in the reborn magazine - only they would not pay women for it. It started to publish fewer editions per year, and ultimately in 2018 announced that following the Summer edition published that January, it would be sporadic and mostly online... until the publisher went under.

However, the choice of [[UsefulNotes/{{Iran}} Ayatollah Khomeini]] in 1979 proved to be ''hugely'' controversial, as many readers were disgusted with the magazine for "honoring" an enemy of the United States (even though Person of the Year was never meant as an honor). Decay set in as ''Time'' stuck with safer choices from then on, such as giving it to Rudy Giuliani instead of UsefulNotes/OsamaBinLaden in [[TheWarOnTerror 2001]] in order to avoid a similar backlash, which only reinforced the false perception that Person of the Year was meant as an honor. The same issue named UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein as Person of the Century...and did so in an article that seemed to tacitly admit that Osama Bin Laden and Adolf Hitler would've been the most logical selections (under the official "not an honor" standard).\\\

* ''Magazine/{{MAD}}'' itself was accused of suffering from this at least since the late 1990s, relying only on [[RefugeInVulgarity gross humor]] when it's not aiming {{Take That}}s at almost AnythingThatMoves; the former is rather factual, while the latter fits more to [[WesternAnimation/{{MAD}} its animated adaptation]], itself LighterAndSofter than ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' or ''WesternAnimation/RobotChicken''. One major milestone of shame was the addition of actual advertisements in 2001, which were previously the subject of vicious lampooning. The pivot to political satire beginning with the 2016 election, has been credited with hastening the publication's demise (which occurred in 2019) instead of reviving it.

Nowadays, they actually show fewer naked women than they used to--the announcement in 2015 that, starting the following year, they would no longer have nude models (mostly because the magazine itself was not as important as its digital forays, which had some distribution problems[[note]]For starters, Apple refused to carry the Playboy app due to nudity[[/note]]) was merely the culmination of a long trend. But when that backfired, however, the nudes returned to the magazine in 2017, although only for the centerfold, and much softer. After Hugh Hefner died that year, the magazine changed course with a new management led mostly by young women, who have improbably revamped ''Playboy'' into a female-friendly, politically-outspoken publication.

* Speaking of which, ''Magazine/{{Playboy}}'' once held as much of a sense of sophistication as it was possible for a magazine featuring naked women. It was once genuinely possible to say "I only read ''Playboy'' [[IReadItForTheArticles for the articles]]" and be dead serious. It's really quite astonishing to see some of the articles ''Playboy'' ran in the 1960s and '70s — interviews with UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter, Martin Luther King Jr., Albert Speer, and Creator/VladimirNabokov; short stories by John Updike, Creator/PhilipRoth, and Creator/UrsulaKLeGuin; political and cultural commentary by the likes of William F. Buckley, Norman Mailer and Norman Thomas — basically, half the great American writers of the late 20th Century. And some non-Americans, too: Creator/ArthurCClarke and Creator/PGWodehouse published a few stories then, as well, and two of Creator/GeorgeMacdonaldFraser's ''Literature/{{Flashman}}'' novels were serialized there (admittedly, the latter's a more comfortable fit). Hugh Hefner even half-jokingly told a group of Playmates, "Without you, I'd be the publisher of a literary magazine."\\\

Nowadays, they actually show fewer naked women than they used to--In 2015 ''Playboy'' announced that, starting the following year, they would no longer have nude models (mostly because the magazine itself was not as important as its digital forays, which had some distribution problems[[note]]For starters, Apple refused to carry the Playboy app due to nudity[[/note]]) was merely the culmination of a long trend. But when that backfired, however, the nudes returned to the magazine in 2017, although only for the centerfold, and much softer. After Hugh Hefner died that year, the magazine changed course with a new management led mostly by young women, who have improbably revamped ''Playboy'' into a female-friendly, politically-outspoken publication.
** The Brazilian version was accused of decay for both "fewer naked women" (and an obsession for "Suicide Girls"--tattooed pin-ups) and "more pseudo-celebrities" (about four ''Series/BigBrother'' contestants a year!), not to mention "questionable cover choices" (a surfer that some compared to Gerard Depardieu, and a writer which had a nice pictorial... [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_YSfsaz6CVQ8/SwqrL24vn2I/AAAAAAAAAdE/X5Yp7ACpvkY/s1600/fernanda_young_playboy.jpg except for the model, of course]] (image is SFW). As circulation fell due to both less captivating cover models and internet piracy, the magazine got shorter and with fewer articles. Add this to the expenses of paying royalties to Playboy Enterprises, the Brazilian publisher eventually decided to finish their ''Playboy'' in 2015, just before the magazine's 40th anniversary. Another company took over and decided to keep the nudity in the reborn magazine - only they would not pay women for it. It started to publish fewer editions per year, and ultimately in 2018 announced that following the Summer edition published that January, it would be sporadic and mostly online... until the publisher went under.

In ''White Dwarf''[='s=] defense, though, the cover does now read "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Games Workshop's Monthly Hobby Supplement and Miniatures Catalogue]]". It also seems to be improving with the ''[[TankGoodness Spearhead]]'' expansion.

* ''Jetix Magazine'' — the Italian version, at least. It started as a magazine about the cartoons aired on Jetix during that period and other stuff. Starting from Issue #5, the whole magazine was written using only XtremeKoolLetterz and started to expand the "and other stuff" part. The only Jetix toons they talked about were ''Anime/SonicX'' and ''WesternAnimation/DragonBooster'', the mail section was filled with letters asking stuff like "Why ''Manga/DragonBall'' isn't aired on Jetix?" or "Can you make a ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' anime and air it immediately?", and they added a ''Manga/DetectiveConan'' section. The video game section stopped using votes and replaced them with one-word comments like "Cool" or "Great", and the articles about villains screwed up adding dangerous animals in it (they said that a DUST MITE is more powerful than [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII Sephiroth]]!)...and then it stopped at Issue #8.

* Magazine/{{Nickelodeon Magazine}} during the 90s and early 2000s featured lots of articles on things kids might find interesting or bizarre, interviews with popular stars at the time, comics, and content related to the channel. Approaching the end of their initial run in 2010, the magazine became a lot thinner and became 99% comics, not restricting them to one section of the magazine anymore and appearing more like the Nickelodeon Comics separate magazines.

* ''RAW'' was a British rock magazine launched in the late 1980s by some former ''Kerrang!'' writers who wished to explore areas of rock music beyond pure Metal; it lasted about a year before it was bought by the large publisher EMAP. Soon after, EMAP went on to buy ''Kerrang!'' itself and the decline of ''RAW'' was complete by the mid-1990s, as it was relaunched to capitalise on the {{Britpop}} boom. Having completely alienated its existing readership and totally failed to attract the Britpop crowd it was hoping for, the magazine was quietly closed after a handful of Britpop-orientated issues.

* ''NME'' is one of Britain's longest running magazines. It used to be a magazine that covered the latest music news but in 2015 the magazine was rebranded into a free to pick up trends magazine for college boys.

** This infamous [[http://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/19insert-word-here-differences-between-time-magazine-us-and collage]] compares ''Time'' U.S. covers to its foreign covers, showing just how far that magazine has gone with regards to this trope. For example, ''Time'''s Europe, Asia, and South Pacific cover story was the continued unrest in post-revolutionary Egypt. Its U.S. cover story? "Why Anxiety Is Good For You." While all four versions contained the same articles, the choice of which one to promote on the cover as being the ''main'' story speaks volumes.

** This infamous [[http://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/19insert-word-here-differences-between-time-magazine-us-and collage]] compares ''Time'''s U.S. cover to its foreign covers, showing just how far that magazine has gone with regards to this trope. For example, ''Time'''s Europe, Asia, and South Pacific cover story was the continued unrest in post-revolutionary Egypt. Its U.S. cover story? "Why Anxiety Is Good For You." While all four versions contained the same articles, the choice of which one to promote on the cover as being the ''main'' story speaks volumes.

* ''Gargoyle'', a student-run magazine at the University of Michigan, started as a literary magazine with a jokes page. It has since turned into a humor magazine reminiscent of ''MAD'' in its prime. The transformation was [[LampshadedTrope Lampshaded]] in some issues, which poked fun at how it went from respectable to pandering to the LowestCommonDenominator, which could very well be an example of TropesAreNotBad.

** The Brazilian version was accused of decay for both "fewer naked women" (and an obsession for tattooed pin-ups) and "more pseudo-celebrities" (about four ''Series/BigBrother'' contestants a year!), not to mention "questionable cover choices" (a surfer that some compared to Gerard Depardieu, and a writer which had a nice pictorial... [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_YSfsaz6CVQ8/SwqrL24vn2I/AAAAAAAAAdE/X5Yp7ACpvkY/s1600/fernanda_young_playboy.jpg except for the model, of course]] (image is SFW). As circulation fell due to both less captivating cover models and internet piracy, the magazine got shorter and with fewer articles. Add this to the expenses of paying royalties to Playboy Enterprises, the Brazilian publisher eventually decided to finish their ''Playboy'' in 2015, just before the magazine's 40th anniversary. Another company took over and decided to keep the nudity in the reborn magazine - only they would not pay women for it. It started to publish fewer editions per year, and ultimately in 2018 announced that following the Summer edition published that January, it would be sporadic and mostly online... until the publisher went under.

* ''Esquire'' and ''GQ'': The latter started out in 1931 as ''Apparel Arts'', a fashion magazine for the men's clothing trade aimed at wholesale buyers and retail sellers. Its popularity among the public however led to the creation of ''Esquire'' in 1933 as a monthly digest that consisted mostly of short stories, humorous features and interviews from some of the top writers of the time (including Gordon Lish, William F. Buckley, and Truman Capote), becoming in the 1960s a fertile ground for the wave of "new journalism". ''Apparel Arts'' became ''Gentlemen's Quarterly'' in 1958 and [[ArtifactTitle turned into a monthly]] in 1970. The magazines' joint ownership ended in 1977 (when ''Esquire'' was sold and briefly became a fortnightly), Condé Nast acquired ''GQ'' in 1983 and Hearst took over ''Esquire'' in 1986. The changing tastes of the 1990s proved devastating to both publications, as ''Esquire''[='=]s focus on literature and ''GQ''[='=]s obsession for high couture did not click with a more casual generation that gravitated towards newer (and raunchier) publications. ''GQ'' soon turned around as the "Metrosexual Bible", while ''Esquire'' followed suit by the end of the decade, engaging in a mutual race to the bottom -- containing similar feature stories, [[PublicExposure racy photoshoots]] of [[HollywoodHypeMachine reigning stars and starlets]] and interviews with middle-aged screen studs taking turns at the cover, grooming tips, advice columns, reviews, human-interest stories, a "Sexiest Woman Alive" yearly poll, advertisements for sexual performance products (ranging from Viagra to squicky-sounding novelties). Beginning in 2015, both magazines increased their political coverage (at the same time their sex content was reduced--"Esky" ditched the Sexiest Woman Alive list and ), leading a trend that was followed by almost every magazine in the US.