By Kevin McCauley
American Media Inc. has purchased the U.S. edition of OK! Magazine from Richard Desmond's Northern & Shell, owner of the U.K.’s Daily Express, Daily Star and Channel Five.
Launched in the U.S. in 2005, OK!, "the magazine the stars trust," has a weekly circulation of 800K and readership of 6.6M with a median age of 29. Its website gets nearly 3M unique visitors and 9.4M page views per month.
David Pecker, CEO of AMI, says the acquisition will increase "market share in newsstand unit sales from 30 percent to 36 percent."
The deal "allows us to offer our advertisers a wider range of celebrity coverage than any single publication or group of titles from any publisher," he said in announcing the deal.
The addition of OK! to AMI’s Star, National Enquirer, TV Guide, Soap Opera Digest, Soap Opera Weekly and Country Weekly creates a total audience of 40M readers.
The OK! site with AMI's RadarOnline.com and StarMagazine.com will generate 10M unique visitors per month. |