NEW STAR ON THE NEWSSTAND?

After 12 weeks of testing and rejiggering, former Us Weekly editor Bonnie Fuller last week rolled out her revamped Star magazine nationwide and--shocker!--the erstwhile supermarket tabloid looks almost exactly like Us Weekly. Gone is the smudgy newsprint; banished are tales of aging celebrities. Instead, the new Star teems with glossy publicity shots, stalkerazzi sightings and red-carpet fashion hits and misses. The resemblance to Us Weekly is purely intentional, says David Pecker, CEO of American Media, which publishes the Star. For years the Star's circulation has been eroding, from 2.2 million in 1996 to 1.2 million in 2003. When Fuller was heading up Us, Pecker says, "I was losing 100,000 readers a week."

So he wooed Fuller away from Us (paying her a reported $3 million in salary and incentives) and sank $50 million into upgrading the magazine. He moved the Star to a better newsstand neighborhood, too. Instead of positioning it with its sister publications, the Globe and the National Enquirer, the Star is now displayed next to People, In Touch and, of course, Us. To offset expenses, Pecker raised the price--from $2.19 to $3.29--and launched a drive to turn occasional buyers into regular subscribers. Just like a movie queen with a fresh face-lift, the Star is going after hipper fans. "Our future is in getting a younger generation of readers," says Fuller.

So far, the reaction to the new Star has been mixed. In New York and Los Angeles test markets, Pecker claims he's pulling in a better demographic. But media-gossip columns have detailed escalating tensions between Fuller and Pecker over rising costs and staff churn. "Untrue," says Pecker of those rumors. "It's difficult for me to say this, but don't believe everything you read." Newsstand sales, a key sign of a magazine's vitality, have been uneven. In January, sales dropped from 950,000 to about 800,000 but rose again last month when Fuller featured a 275-pound Kirstie Alley on the cover. The inaugural issue's cover story was anticlimactic. While the Star breathlessly quoted unnamed sources speculating that Tom wanted to reconnect with Nicole, In Touch ran an almost identical cover story (and costs $1.99).

Drawn by the makeover, a few major advertisers such as Quaker and General Motors have signed on, but media buyers predict most will hang back until the three-way death match between In Touch, Us Weekly and the Star is over. "Fuller's created a distinctive tone," says Robin Steinberg, a media buyer at Carat. "But the field is just too crowded." Fuller says she'll steal back readers from Us, as well as from women's magazines like Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire, where she once worked. "The appetite for celebrity news is only growing," she says. "I think it's a bottomless pit." Until, of course, you hit bottom.

© 2004