In February the broadcaster announced the decision to drop its bi-monthly Sky Movies and Sky Sports magazines, which had a combined circulation of 8m, from July in favour of a weekly email.

Sky's intention at the time was to reduce the frequency of the flagship Sky Magazine from monthly to a quarterly title; however, the decision has now been taken to drop the UK's largest printed magazine altogether.

Richard Gray, managing director of Prinovis, which printed all of the Sky titles, referred to the decision in a recent interview with PrintWeek and highlighted its significance for the print industry.

Asked about the restructuring of Sky's printed titles, resulting in the dropping of Sky Movies and Sky Sports and the reduction in frequency of Sky Magazine, Gray said: "Sky Magazine made a structural change in terms of their marketing leading to Sky stopping the production of the largest customer publishing title in the UK and Europe.

"They have chosen to use other channels than print and mailing in the future. We very much hope that Sky will see what the printed product delivered for them in the past and maybe look again in the future at using print as a major marketing medium.

"We do have to be concerned when companies such as BskyB, who understand the benefits that print can offer, make decisions about their marketing budgets that drastically reduce the use of the printed medium.  BskyB’s decision should be worrying for the printing industry, not just Prinovis."