At right is an easy-to-read graph that shows the year-over-year change in newsstand sales for a half dozen celebrity tabloids. (Where, oh where, is Hip Hop Weekly?!) What you'll notice, in addition to OK!'s nearly 20 percent jump forward, is the decline of Englewood Cliffs-based Bauer's In Touch and Life & Style, which look to the newsstand for an enormous 90 percent of total sales (versus home subscriptions, for instance). It also explains why Bauer is being forced to lower its advertiser rate base, reports WSJ. Having missed its 1 million copy promise more than half of the year, according to ABC data, the new rate base will be 800,000; Life & Style missed its 550,000 rate base two out of every three issues, and will lower its guarantee to 400,000. Supposedly, the lowered forecasts are evidence that even with the doom-and-gloom economy, Americans are not turning to escapist fare like tabloids. More accurately, however, we would surmise circulation numbers across the weeklies are so over inflated, this is just some correction setting. Or maybe it's just a result of shitty (now fired) marketers?
The triple murder tragedy of Jennifer Hudson's family wasn't going to be ignored by the celebrity weeklies. Sadly, multiple deaths are what it takes to get a black girl on the cover of a tabloid. The editors of each weekly, then, had to consider how the competition was going to play the game. Only People and Us gave Hudson A1 treatment, while every other magazine at least included her in a sidebar or footer.
Life & Style and OK! ended up with the same photo. Only the Globe went with a picture of Jennifer with her mouth closed — because nothing says tragedy like eyes staring into the horizon and a mouth agape.
And the honor of Going Full Exploitative goes to, not surprisingly: CONTINUED »
"It’s very important for advertisers to know that they can participate in integrated ad packages if they want to. Everything we do has to at least have the potential to be multimedia and work across print, online and television. This kind of marketing is all very fresh and new and fun for our growing list of advertisers." —OK! publisher Tom Morrisey to Folio yesterday talking about "selling beyond the page," which helped Morrisey boost ad pages 34 percent in Q3.
And get him fired this week.
It wasn't the $2 million-plus Bonnie Fuller, nor Janice Min's former No. 2 (and former British OK! chief) Nicola McCarthy who will be replacing Sarah Ivens (who says she gave notice back in June) atop OK!. Instead, new-ish general manager Kent Brownridge opted for Susan Toepfer of Hearst's recently shuttered Quick & Simple, a might-as-well-be eponym for the tabloid biz. More interesting, though, is Brownridge's unexpected shakeup on the publisher side: Out is Tom Morrissey, in is Lori Burgess. Nevermind that Morrisey brought ad pages up 34 percent through September in an industry where that type of thing is usually rewarded with use of the corporate jet. Burgess, meanwhile, left her SVP spot Niche Media in March, where she landed after publisher gigs at House & Garden and Elle.
So what does all of this say? Common wisdom might suggest Brownridge selected Toepfer and Burgess because he got them on the cheap — in an effort to reduce owner Richard Desmond's growing fears of having sunk too much cash into his American tabloid spinoff. But Brownridge can often be overheard spewing his arithmetic model: The tabloid business is full of fixed costs (printing, checkout aisle pockets, photos), and any publisher knows those costs before getting into the game, so it makes zero sense to skimp on the talent, who are responsible for trying to fashion OK! into a leader among the competition. That is: Cutting costs over staffers doesn't make much sense.
Oh, and all this nonsense about Brownridge trying to woo Bonnie Fuller with that consulting gig? Apparently not much truth to it.
Ooooh, they've gone and done it. After shafting them last week by releasing news of the divorce after the tabloids hit newsstands, Madonna and Guy Ritchie are being paid back by the celeb weeklies with less than favorable reports. Only People, long in bed with Madonna's camp via rep Liz Rosenebrg, attempts any sense of kid glove treatment with the coverline, but inside they detail the "battle" over David Banda and Rocco. Us Weekly and OK!, running with nearly identical photos as People, are notable for what they don't provide: Neither sides with Madonna nor Guy here, instead painting them both as loathsome characters.
But most interesting this week are the Bauer tabloids take: In Touch went with a Jennifer Aniston-Courteney Cox "Yes We Had Plastic Surgery" tale and Life & Style opted for Angelina Jolie "admitting" to a love affair. And that's half the job of a celeb weekly editor: Predicting what the other magazines are going to run with, and either trying to do it better, or move on another angle. Bless them, because a world without obsessing over Madonna's divorce is one we'd choose to live in.
Know what sucks about Madonna breaking news of her (hopefully going to be messy!) divorce on a Wednesday? That not only did she usurp the printing schedule for this week's tabloids, but she forced them into running benign items about her that depicted her as a great mom (much to Guy Ritchie's dismay). Except this spread in this week's People, which shows just how much daughter Lourdes is adopting mom's style, looks quite familiar. CONTINUED »
This week, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt entered New York's orbit at the same time as Britney Spears, setting off everybody's e-meter and forcing the Catholic church to issue a statement that, no, the apocalypse was not before us. But what Ms. Jolie did allow, for the first time in many weeks, is to walk a red carpet (at the Changeling premiere) and have every tabloid pounce. Indeed, the five weeklies that hit newsstands every Wednesday all feature Jolie in some manner. But two in particular took wildly different approaches to the actress' lack of post-twins baby weight. CONTINUED »
Life & Style, often described to us as the black sheep of the tabloid industry, has suffered a tumultuous history. Since Bauer head Hubert Boehle launched it in 2004, it's seen a sea change of editors-in-chief. Most recently, Australia's Donna Armstrong was shown the door — for "maternity leave" — after being hired only in July. Before she, In Touch editor Richard Spencer had been manning the magazine with the help of his two deputies, Dan Wakeford and Michelle Lee. That's because Mark Pasetsky was removed from the post (he's since taken to bashing his former employer) after Debra Birnbaum, now the editor of TV Guide, exited in another regime change. So, where do we stand now? With In Touch exec editor Dan Wakeford taking over L&S's top spot, making him the sixth editor in three years. Which means the job could either be a blessing (who doesn't want to run their own magazine?) or a curse (don't L&S editors last at Bauer no more than, like, four months?).
JOSSIP REPORTS — The story behind Clay Aiken's coming out cover for People goes something like this: Lots of magazines were in the running for the photo exclusive, but People outbid them all for a cool $500,000. That's the way MSNBC's The Scoop reported it last week, and that's the story Page Six carried this morning.
Except as our sources tell it — and these are the type of sources who were, let's say, involved in the actual transaction — OK! didn't have a shot in hell at the pictures. In fact, no tabloid did. Not Us Weekly, not Star, and certainly not In Touch or Life & Style.
Despite what OK! might have you believe, the only way Clay's coming out would be told was in the pages of People. And that's exactly how it happened. Here's why: CONTINUED »
There's been a lot of press recently (and okay, not so recently) about the deluge of the nouveau-razzi; those underage shutterbugs that freelance for Star and Esquire, berating their subjects and telling them to go eat a sandwich.
But with the rise of photo sites like Last Night's Party and Cobrasnake, as well as the recent profiles of the paparazzi themselves, the once faceless mob is now entering its own era in the spotlight. Suffice to say, once Adrien Grenier makes a documentary about you, you're officially your own subgenre of alt-celebrity. At heart though, still just terrible:
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As the tabloid industry wonders whether its readership has really plateaued or is just going into hibernation during the economic meltdown, publishers have their hands on some pretty concrete evidence. At Life & Style, the Bauer pub has learned that at least for now, America doesn't care if there's a TomKat v. Brangelina war going on; the issue bombed. In maybe! related! news!, editor Donna Armstrong isn't expected back after maternity leave. And as for mixing celebrity and politics — readers are saying, "Yes please." Us Weekly's Sarah Palin attack issue held the circulation status quo, while People's Palin-sympathetic cover moved an estimated 1.75 million copies (compared to its usual 1.45m); which lends evidence this week's McCain family cover will also do well. And the week after, a special double issue with McCain on one side and Palin on the other!
Certainly we're witnessing a phenomenon here, where newsweeklies like Time and Newsweek are seeing their circulation plummet, while the tabloids have found a new content pool in turning politicos into scandal-crazed A-listers — and taking sides just like they do with Jennifer v. John, Brad v. Angelina, and Brad v. Jen. But what, oh what, might we be witnessing in real time? The regression of the body politic, we're guessing.
Remember when Janice Min used to dedicate entire spreads to calling out her competitors for their factual mistakes? Us Weekly's "Faux News" provided us with endless fodder. Often, Min aimed her ire at Bauer's In Touch and Life & Style for their Brangelina baby news. Worth mentioning, then, that In Touch is calling out none other than Us Weekly for its (supposedly) inaccurate Brangelina baby news: "Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are setting the record straight about their newborn babies, Knox and Vivienne. Angelina denies US Weekly's recent report that she underwent fertility treatments. 'If they had been conceived though IVF, we would have been happy to discuss it,' she tells People magazine about the twins, who were born on July 12. 'But we have been fortunate never to have had fertility problems,' she adds."
When People teamed up with Britain's Hello! to offer a joint bid on Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's baby twins, splitting the $14 million fee (that's $3.5m per twin per mag), the U.S. tabloid secured North American rights to the pics, while Hello! would get to print the photos in the rest of the world. One might've thought this would be an even deal, with shots from last week's photo shoot spread evenly between the tabloids. That wasn't the case, according to Jolie Expert and LAT blogger Elizabeth Snead: "Hello's cover shot is even cuter, more intimate and personal than People's." Did Larry Hackett got robbed?
In case you need a break from Dateline's episode about the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office, point your browser at People.com on Sunday at 7pm for an Internet hug.
The first public photos of Knox and Vivienne Jolie-Pitt have already been taken! And, despite our suggestion to nobody in particular that Brad and Angelina split their newborn twins into two separate photo shoots to really maximize profit potential, the babies were photographed together.
But the babies will be split up in one sense: People magazine has secured North American rights to the photos, while British tabloid Hello!, which sports numerous international editions, will have other worldwide rights.
Sound familiar? That's because People and Hello! teamed up in 2006 to publish Brangelina's other baby, Shiloh.
In the end, the price is pegged somewhere between $11 and $15 million, though that could be off by as much as a multiple of two. And while the price is certainly one for the record books (for now), keep in mind that the price includes two babies; so really, we're talking bargain.
Not that it's any consolation to OK! publisher Richard Desmond. CONTINUED »
Joe Dolce, the former Star editor-in-chief who was ushered out with Bonnie Fuller, is trying to generate an income from DolceGoldin, the media strategy firm he formed with former MSNBC editorial director Davidson Goldin. His new agency's biggest client is none other than Oprah foe James Frey — and Frey's ability to get the media to come around to him, even writing positive book reviews about his latest effort, whether their doing or not, is great marketing for their little firm. It's also a chance for Dolce to shed his bad boy tabloid past, where he was all too complicit in the paparazzi-celebrity-magazine exchange, where cash changed hands for stalkerazzi pics, and everybody excused their behavior with "this is what the public wants" excuses. The same line drug dealers use! CONTINUED »
Quickly reinventing herself as a comedian and tabloid analyst — hey, didn't another former celeb weekly EIC try doing that? — ex-Star chief Bonnie Fuller has plastered copy all over Huffington Post as a concerned mother dishing out advice for celebrity moms. Now, she's a media strategist for what may be the future First Family: "I'm convinced that the marketing and PR experts surrounding the Obamas clued in to the enormous influence that 'celebrities' have had on the American public, particularly women, over the past seven years since the emergence of Us Weekly, Star and other celebrity newsweeklies and the subsequent explosion of celebrity news. And they want to take advantage of the deep affection that Americans have developed for celebrities." Get. Out.
When we spotted People's Barack Obama cover on the newsstand yesterday, the first thought that hit was was "They're totally following Us Weekly's lead" Janice Min's tabloid, of course, has given the Obama clan plenty of love (owing in part to Jann Wenner's love affair with Barack), from inside pages to the (said to be well-selling) cover last month. But, as it turns out, People has been putting presidential types on its cover for years. Warning: Bad hair ahead. CONTINUED »
The case could be made that we've already over-analyzed the over-analyzing of Brad and Angelina's baby twins as we tried to find the winners and the losers in previous nine months of baby speculation. But we did some digging through our tabloid archives and found a few shining stars among the blight, where some celebrity weeklies fared better in their guessing game — is she having a boy? a girl? twins? two girls? — than others.
It's not an exhaustive examination of every Brangelina-related baby cover of the past year, which would show that every tabloid got some info right and wrong at some point. But treat it as evidence that plenty of folks didn't really know what they were doing, and that "inside sources" could often be replaced by "magic 8-balls" or "Crazy Aunt Zelda." CONTINUED »
Speaking of Us Weekly, the latest circulation reports for the tabloids are out and they've got Keith Kelly explaining why Jann Wenner might be looking to unload the tabloid: After eight years of steady growth, it's missing its rate base of 1.9 million by 4.1 percent! Not that Wenner might, you know, downgrade the rate base a smidge so he wouldn't have to face headlines like this. Elsewhere for the first five months of the year, People is over its 3.425 million rate base by 9.4 percent, OK! is 1 percent above its 900k mark, Star is 5.8 percent above its 1.25 million base, In Touch missed its 1.2 million promise by 0.9 percent, and Life & Style was off its 550k guarantee by 0.7 percent. Barack Obama, won't you save us?
Editorial Director
