The editor of a gay title has been made redundant as part of a proposed relaunch next month.
Boyz editor-in-chief David Hudson, who has been editor since 1998, will leave the post, and Boyz managing director David Bridle has said that he will take over day-to-day editorial duties in August.
Bridle confirmed that the shake-up was part of the move to recapture the youth market and get the free weekly title on newsstands. Former Boyz editor Simon Gage and his company Warwick Worldwide will help provide editorial content and consultancy.
Bridle said: "It's not to disrespect what David has done — he's done a marvellous job, but as the title's owner, I want to get my hands on the reins."
He added: "Boyz has always been a young men's gay title, but we're at the stage where we need to remind ourselves what we're about. We're looking again at what an 18-year-old would want from the title."
Currently Boyz is predominantly available in gay clubs and bars in London and the Southeast, with a circulation of 25,000, but its publishers, Windmill Europe, are talking to distributors to get the title on the newsstands, minus its traditional gay adult content.
That content has already been gathered into one pull-out section — Tug— which won't be available on the newsstand, and the publishers hope this will entice advertisers who have previously been averse to being associated with the publication.
Bridle said: "You could get Boyz without Tug as an adult free mag which could sit on the shelves of Borders.
"I think it's a significant point for gay media, because Attitude and Gay Times still rely on the porn side [for advertising revenue] and it's a bigger move for us than Pink News because it was a webled proposition.
"It's ironic, because Boyz has always been associated with sex."
Commenting on his departure from Boyz, Hudson said: "‘I feel very proud to have edited Boyz for the past eight years, and of all that the magazine has achieved in that time."
Pinknews.co.uk claimed to be the first gay title to deliberately avoid explicit adult content and advertising when it launched a print supplement in Brighton-based magazine 3Sixty this month, responding to a gap in the market for a publication "not dominated by sex and clubbing" according to its editor-in-chief, Benjamin Cohen.
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog
