(GENERIC RESEARCH) Farewell to Smash Hits!... and the demise of NME

The article "NME and the death of the music press" can be found in this url below:

The death of the music press

"They are witless automatons, smiley conduits for the groundbreaking work of pop production teams."

The five key points of the article "Farewell to Smash Hits" are as follows:

• The once-popular fortnightly music magazine Smash Hits went out of print on February 13, 2006 after at least 28 years of publication, from its very first issue in 1978.
• Just like neighbouring music magazine NME, Smash Hits in its early days was once a music magazine full of "marginal" interviews with British alternative rock bands such as the Clash and the Sex Pistols; its archival "indie" section used to contain a specialist chart of independent music hits e.g. "Let's Build a Car" by experimental rock group Swell Maps. Even Margaret Thatcher, who was Prime Minister at the time, opted to be interviewed. However, it descended into an esoteric change in musical form.
• British teen pop coverage was introduced, and then a massive revival of the brand followed. With the insurgence of bands such as Adam and the Ants, Smash Hits deviated from its usual alternative rock music coverage and focused more on the popular trend that followed in its footsteps, as in the words of Paul Weller: "It's like punk never 'appened."
• But then this happened. The circulation of Smash Hits hit rock-bottom, and its reviews on pop stars who had declining careers were scathing and critically panned; Smash Hits had basically crashed out in terms of subsequent interviews and its "grilling" of pop stars with lifeless comments. Its issues were outsold by Top of the Pops, the BBC's version of a typical pop magazine.
• Smash Hits' issues were considered then to be too repetitive during its downfall in the 1990s; its behaviour did not change. It seems that it failed to understand the real importance of pop stars in Britain at the time, its dead fame bogged down in its own pomposity and self-exaggeration.