Express Enters Celebrity Market
Express Newspapers has entered the celebrity magazine market, with the launch of New magazine, which is set to hit the newstands today with a price tag of 60p.
The group has remained tight-lipped about the project, which was incorrectly outed in the trade press earlier this month as Wow! magazine.
Commenting in the Sunday Express, the editor of New!, Kirsty Mouatt, said: “We’re going to give the celebrity magazines market a huge kick up the backside. What we’re offering is a much slicker mix of news, pictures and gossip every week for about half the price.”
The magazines editor is a former editor of the OK! pull out magazine and Heat doppelganger, Hot Stars.
The new title is entering the already crowded market with little of the promotion that accompanied Emap’s celebrity focused Closer magazine (see Emap Promotes Closer With Give-Away).
Critics of the project have already knocked the title, claiming the magazine will offer little more than a re-hashed version of OK! and the celebrity focused stories of the Daily Star.
However, Mouatt is confident the new title will be a success, telling the Sunday Express: “When this [magazine] comes out, I wonder how many people will still want to bother reading something like Heat.”
Meanwhile, the bitter feud between Express owner Richard Desmond and Daily Mail and General Trust executive Viscount Rothermere continues to grab the headlines.
According to the Observer, Associated Newspapers have served an injunction on Northern and Shell to attempt to prevent the group using the Mail name in the masthead of its planned new London freesheet (see Desmond Plans To Launch New Evening Paper For London).
The move follows speculation that Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard, is drawing up plans to launch a tabloid competitor to Desmond’s Daily Star.
Northern & Shell: 020 7308 5090
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