With the publics' seemingly insatiable hunger for any type of gossip about celebrities, it has been the one bright spot for magazine publishers.
Some of the notable successes have been InTouch Weekly, Us Weekly and Star Magazine.
"According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), in the first half of 2006, InTouch Weekly's newsstand sales rose 5.3% over the same period in 2005, climbing from 1,090,088 to 1,147,390. In a marked difference from almost every other genre, InTouch Weekly's newsstand 
sales dwarf its subscription base, which grew 27.5% to 42,546.
"And according to the latest figures from the Publishers' Information Bureau (PIB), in January-September, InTouch's ad pages rose 38.6% compared to the same period last year--topping 646, as revenue jumped 84.6% to almost $78 million. Meanwhile, a similar Bauer title that also offers celebrity fashion tips, Life&Style Weekly, saw newsstand sales increase 48.3% to 469,749, as pages grew 13.4% to 283 and revenue jumped 113.5% to over $15 million during the first nine months of 2006."
While celebrity gossip has been known to be a lucrative field for years, it seems to have jumped up in interest in the last several years. Rupert Murdoch grew his entire media empire based upon a lot this type of interest from the public.
The problem that will now be faced by these successes will be how many others enter the field and potentially dilute the overall success of individual magazines.
The one thing that helps the current magazines is that they are offered at very low prices - $1.99 an issue - which makes it more difficult to enter the field other than as a commodity. When these magazines entered the marketplace, the other offerings were higher-end, more expensive magazines, which made them vulnerable because it was being read by younger people who didn't care about anything but what was read and the price.
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