Bauer Media is changing Angling Times from a newspaper to a magazine format on 26 April.
The decision to change the weekly fishing newspaper to a glossy magazine follows the success of Garden News, which made the same transition three years ago and has since grown circulation to 36952, and is up 4.74% year on year.
Patrick Horton, managing director of sport at Bauer Media, said: “Garden News is now the fastest growing magazine in the gardening category, which encouraged us to look into the possibility of doing the same with Angling Times. From our research we carried out in December, the evidence for the benefits to change the Angling Times was overwhelming.”
Angling Times has a circulation of just under 20,000, and is the 34th highest selling magazine for independents, according to Frontline. Around a half of these sales are distributed through independent and symbol group stores.
“Our focus is to grow Angling Times through local retailers. As part of this we’ll increase the number of promoted issues, as well as increasing the pagination to around 80 pages, but the price will stay the same.”
A sales uplift of at least 10% is forecast after the change.