Price wars between celebrity magazines are nothing new—we all remember the move by American Media Inc.'s Celebrity Living to drop its newsstand cover price to 25 cents a couple of years ago. (Celebrity Living, of course, is dead.) But rarely if ever do you see a magazine call out the competition by name as OK! has done this week, touting that its $2.99 cover price is “$1 cheaper than Us Weekly & People!” (OK!—it's worth noting—is going for the trifecta with this one: Britney, Jamie Lynn and Suri).
The cover, however, has another problem, this time related to its Britney Spears’ “scoop” (see how the Spears Family made our just-announced FOLIO: 40 list): the cover shot it is using to illustrate Ms. Spears’ 15 lb., four-week weight loss is actually from a Glamour photo shoot three years ago.
We already know magazines will do anything to justify a Britney cover. This one, though, seems to be an attempt to appease the Spears family publicist(s) for its next scoop feeding.
The Celebrity Newsstand | Second-Half 2007 Circulation
| TITLE | SINGLE COPY SALES | %CHNG | OVERALL | %CHNG |
| In Touch | 1,228,056 | 0.10% | 1,271,354 | 0.20% |
| Life & Style | 672,463 | -9.70% | 681,723 | -9.50% |
| OK | 550,100 | 7.10% | 935,375 | 23.50% |
| People | 1,428,760 | -8.50% | 3,618,718 | -3.50% |
| Us Weekly | 1,005,086 | 2.70% | 1,928,852 | 10.10 |
SOURCE: ABC Fas-Fax