Are these seven-figure sums that celebrity weeklies pay for exclusive pics justifiable? Are magazines actually turning a profit from these huge payouts? Is the inflation of photo prices only benefiting the celebs?
In a story that could’ve been on the shelf for weeks, the Times‘ Richard Perez-Pena looks at the tabloid industry’s growing tendency to pay huge sums for exclusive photos.
So what are the answers to the questions above?
Yes, yes. And yes. (Asterisk, asterisk. And asterisk.) CONTINUED »
People magazine named Kate Hudson it’s Most Beautiful Person in its annual “100 Most Beautiful” issue. Then again, Rumer Willis was also included on the list, so you can imagine how much authority this thing carries. [People]
AUDIT BUREAU OF PERCOLATION With audit data finally here for 2006 (Was Britney a complete mess then? Cannot remember!), the celebrity weeklies are showing off just how many times they missed their rate bases. Every tabloid missed the mark in double digits, except for People BECAUSE THEY ARE PERFECT. [NYP]
People magazine’s founding editor, Richard B. Stolley, has returned to the magazine to report non-celebrity items, like a profile of a guy who founded an HIV awareness group and an interview with the former C.I.A. officer Valerie Plame. It’s sort of like BuzzMachine.com’s Jeff Jarvis returning to Entertainment Weekly and writing about the interesting people he meets on the floors of trade shows.
Litigator and former Robe Lowe nanny Jessica Gibson got her vamp on two days ago for a People magazine photoshoot. If Rob Lowe can try shaping the allegations of sexual harassment and extortion, then so can she! Here she is in a pic appearing in this week’s issue, where it should be captioned “Jessica has nothing to hide,” as per attorney Gloria Allred’s talking point, and our own conclusion after looking at her bangin’ body.
Why was Jessica Gibson, Rob Lowe’s former nanny, smiling like a cat that just ate a canary during her interview with Meredith Vieira on the “Today” Show yesterday? Her apparently happy demeanor struck me as odd. As a purported victim of sexual harassment, shouldn’t she at least look and sound a little upset?
Answers TMZ: CONTINUED »
Was Heath Ledger set up by paparazzi agency Splash News when he was caught snorting coke after the 2006 SAG Awards? A just-filed lawsuit by a former People magazine reporter, identified only as “Jane Doe,” claims her boyfriend at the time and his colleague — Darren Banks and Eric Munn, both Splash photogs — surreptitiously convinced her to to allow them into her Chateau Marmont hotel room. It was there that Banks and Munn allegedly set up a video camera to record the room from the balcony, and then laid out some coke on the coffee table, where all parties involved (except the plaintiff, supposedly) took part in the festivities. Eventually, Ledger found the camera, went ballistic, and was assured the tape would be destroyed.
As we all know, it wasn’t; Entertainment Tonight bought it for $200,000 and promoted the hell out of it, but never aired the footage after half of Hollywood and their publicists threatened to boycott the show.
So why is the former People lass suing now? She claims the tape makes it appear as if she snorted coke, which means she’s after damages for fraud, intrusion, infliction of emotional distress, and privacy violations.
Turns out People magazine’s Christina Aguilera baby photo issue, which cost them a reported $1.5 million, sold better than the estimated 1.3 million copies originally thought; it moved 1.45 million on the newsstand.
That’s one highlighted stat from the latest tabloid data, which shows People up 5 percent year-to-date, with an average 1.5 million copies moving on the newsstand, according to ABC data being released today. The mag’s biggest mover? January’s Heath Ledger, which sold 1.8m, thanks to it being the only weekly to close late enough to catch the obit. But that issue is expected to be bested by Jennifer Lopez’s newborn twins, with estimates of 1.9m.
And how is the competition faring? CONTINUED »
Don’t you often wonder how celebrity magazines score exclusive sightings and insider starlet news? You might be led to believe their roving reporter corps are snagging tips from sauced publicists who are too drunk to know they’re spilling, or their checkbook does the reporting.
Or, most likely, a publicist is planting an item.
Yesterday, Marissa McMillion, a marketing staffer at designer Christian Audigier/Ed Hardy, blasted the press with news that Britney Spears stopped by the corporate offices to meet with Audigier himself, and that “she came to check out his new spring collection but mainly to discuss business… she wants to work on a line with Chrisitian… was in good spirits… Christian and her were laughing… she also left with tons of gear… She really loved the new Ed Hardy bathing suits… thought they were “gorgeous… put on the Ed Hardy sunglasses instantly… got presents for Jamie Lynn (her birthday is tomorrow)… got her Christian Audigier handbags, scarves, Ed Hardy bathing suit, Ed Hardy cologne and belts.”
And look how well it moved down the gossip line:
There’s People magazine’s “Britney Spears’s Birthday Shopping for Jamie Lynn” item, which reports “Christian and she were laughing as she tried on Ed Hardy sunglasses and checked out the bathing suits”; and there’s Star magazine’s “Britney Gets Presents For Jamie Lynn’s Birthday!” item.
And, of course, because this was a super secret meeting, the paparazzi were nowhere to be found!
Staffers at Parents magazine love their celebrity gossip as much as the rest of this TMZ-revering nation, so they were fawning over People’s $6 million Jennifer Lopez baby photos this week, too. Except they spotted something awry with the new mom’s six-figure nursery.
Basically, it’s a baby death trap!
The Meredith Corp.-owned magazine was only too pleased to call out Time Inc.’s tabloid’s nursery pictorial, which includes crib “suffocation hazards” called pillows, stuffed animals, and blankets. The “dramatic draped canopies hanging over the cribs” are cause for “strangulation.” And the “cute bows tied onto the crib slats” are “choking hazards as soon as the babies are big enough to get their hands on them.” And there’s an open window sans window guard. CAN YOU BELIEVE?!
We’re hearing People’s J. Lo twins issue moved between two and three million copies at the newsstand, according to multiple scan data sources. (Distributor AMI says 3m; supermarket data say 2m.)
By comparison, Nicole Richie’s baby issue is said to have sold 1.8 million at the newsstand, while Christina Aguilera’s moved an estimated 1.3 million.
Turns out People magazine almost certainly had something to do with the disappearance of Jennifer Lopez’s most active fan site OnlineJLoFan.com. When the tabloid’s $6 million cover photos of Lopez and Marc Anthony’s new baby twins hit People.com, the whole spread also got posted on the fan forum — before the site suddenly disappeared from the Internet.
Now OnlineJLoFan.com is back online, but with one big stipulation.
CONTINUED »
Haven’t you heard? Britney Spears is on the road to recovery! Sure, you thought this was the case when she finally divorced then-nutjob Kevin Federline and made her David Letterman appearance, but now she’s doing Responsible Person things like showing up for work and keeping her hair in tact. And her guest spot on How I Met Your Mother? It’s getting rave reviews all around!
OK! applauds the effort: “Her performance was so good, she managed to wow not only the audience, but her co-stars as well.” People says Britney “took a major step in reviving her career.” Us Weekly is pleased to report on “her big TV comeback.”
And it looks like it’s only Star who can’t get on the happy train. Its new issue’s secondary cover story? Britney’s “Secret Meltdown.”
Though even People magazine posted its $6 million Jennifer Lopez baby photos online before the issue hit stands, it didn’t want anyone else infringing on its publicity boon. Which is why a round of Internet rumors have the magazine responsible for the closure of OnlineJLoFan.com, arguably the largest Lopez fan site. They posted the cover sometime on Thursday and was inexplicably offline shortly thereafter. Now fingers point at Time Inc. attorneys, who may have gotten web host GoDaddy.com to cave; the site now reads, “This site is currently unavailable. If you are the owner of this site, please contact us at 1-480-505-8855 at your earliest convenience.”
And this wouldn’t be the first time the cheap web registrar caved — it canceled the account of Seclists.org when MySpace complained over the publishing of a list of usernames and password.
When this week’s People magazine hit this morning, Americans got their first $6 million peek at Jennifer Lopez’s new twin babies Max and Emme. So cute! So adorable!
And then when readers flip to the inside pages of the magazine, there’s another story about twins. Except this one is about a father who stabbed his twin daughters to death.
Awk-ward.
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Even after spending $6 million for Jennifer Lopez’s new twins, People magazine couldn’t resist also being the magazine that scored those first pics of Owen Wilson and Kate Hudson holding hands. (Smart move keeping Marc Anthony off the cover though!) Us Weekly is said to have dropped out of the bidding for the photos, proving too costly at around $100,000, and was instead forced to go with (yet another) Lauren Conrad cover.
Since none of the celebrity tabloids that hit newsstands today have the $100,000 photos of Kate Hudson and Owen Wilson holding hands, we can only assume People magazine was the highest bidder. We’ll know tomorrow.
People magazine is working to reclaim its youth, says an insider with direct ties to the magazine. Not only is Larry Hackett’s rag moving up the book’s closing time – pulling it back 12 hours, so it will now close Tuesday evening, not Wednesday morning – but they’ve enlisted the help of a crop of veterans to shake things up. Because change always comes from industry stalwarts.
The shift was announced during a Friday staff meeting, and includes the import of helping hands Jane Nicholls, editor of Australia’s Who tabloid (also a Time Inc. title), as well as People en Español chief Peter Castro, who spent 18 years at People proper; Star veteran and short-lived VH1 staffer David Caplan, who joined People in September, is also involved in the revamp. (It’s unclear whether Nichols and Castro are just lending their services temporarily, or plan to stay on permanently. We’re guessing the former.)
Not that all the changes to make the magazine “look younger” are sitting well with staffers: Longtime reporter Ashley Williams is said to have decamped for ESPN The Magazine, while, according to our source, “a lot of the younger people [on staff] are over it.”
• On Friday, the founding editor of People magazine, Richard Durrell, died at his Fairfield home at the age of 82.
• People magazine’s best-selling issue in 2007 – aside from its “Sexiest Man Alive” edition – was Owen Wilson’s suicide attempt cover.
• In Touch’s worst-selling issue of the year was its hard news edition of the Virginia Tech massacre.
Score one for a lady with no actual career! Nicole Richie’s baby photos in People are selling better than Christina Aguilera’s, with the tabloid on target to move 1.8 million copies of Harlow Madden.
Meanwhile, Larry Hackett & Co. paid upwards of $2 million for Xtina’s pics and sold 1.3 million copies, losing money on the issue; Nicole’s are said to have cost half that with a full half million more issues moving.
So what the reverse fiscal smarts? CONTINUED »
Editorial Director
