After newsstand owners pressured Bauer to raise the cover prices of In Touch and Life & Style – which, based on the terms these checkout aisle pocket owners have with publishers, means they'll see a larger share of each sale – the tabloids faced backlash from readers in the form of fewer sales. Which means Richard Spencer's two tabloids are forced to cut their rate bases.

In Touch, though its total circ was 1,271,354 in the second half of 2007, hit its 1.2 million rate base, but is lowering its number guaranteed to advertisers to 1 million, down 17 percent.

Life & Style, which had circ of 681,723, missed its 700,000 rate base. It, too, is lowering its guarantee, down to 550,000, or 21 percent.

To be fair, the celeb weekly category, overall, has been slipping, thanks to heavy saturation and those damn gossip blogs. And Bauer has repeatedly inched up the rate bases of both tabloids since they launched; in many instances, In Touch beat veteran heavyweight competitors at the newsstand.

Us Weekly's circ, meanwhile, is up 2.7 percent to 1,005,081; total paid circ is up 10 percent to 1,928,852. OK! is up 24 percent, to 935,378. People will report a fall of 3.5 percent, to 3.7 million, while newsstand dropped 6 percent to 1.42 million. Star is expected to show a 3 or 4 percent dip in newsstand sales, to 713,000.

Meanwhile, even with the rate base cut, Bauer insists its now making more money, with the cover price hikes, than before. So they shouldn't be able to blame budget cuts, then, when explaining why this week's cover of Life & Style (above right) features Bragenlina's baby Shiloh in a blue sweater … that's actually an old photo of her, which appeared on Life & Style last month (above left), but flipped and color-swapped.