Time Considers Another Celebrity Tabloid
By DAVID CARR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A trip through supermarket checkout lines demonstrates that there are more flavors of celebrity gossip than chewing gum, but Time Inc. is still interested in the notion of adding one more product to the mix.

Carol Wallace, the former managing editor of People magazine, is working on a prototype of a celebrity-infested, photo-driven weekly magazine. Call it Son of Picture Week, a photo weekly that Time Inc., a division of AOL Time Warner, abandoned in 1986 after spending $30 million.

"This is just sort of preliminary research," said Norman Pearlstine, editor in chief of Time Inc., adding it was just one of "half a dozen" new magazine ideas being explored.

Time Inc. already publishes People, the behemoth of celebrity newsstand magazines (albeit with a generous helping of real-people coverage).

But with People costing $3.29 a copy on the newsstand and employing an editorial staff in the hundreds, Time Inc. executives think there may be room for a lower-priced, less journalistically costly project that is more willing to display a tabloid sensibility.

Last month, Bauer Publishing USA introduced a magazine that relies on celebrity photographs and costs just $1.99; introductory offers slashed that price to $1. And Wenner Media has posted significant newsstand gains since it hired Bonnie Fuller as editor earlier this year.

Mr. Pearlstine said Time Inc. had learned new approaches to making low-cost magazines from IPC Media, the British magazine company that Time Inc. bought last year. IPC publishes Now, which is a successful celebrity weekly in Britain.

Still, Mr. Pearlstine said, "unless there is a significant change in the economics, it's doubtful we would launch anything like this in 2003." But the company, which has a tradition of asking retiring editors to develop prototypes, was serious enough to have Ms. Wallace come up with four mock-ups in consecutive weeks.

Ms. Wallace, who retired from People after a successful five-year tenure, has no interest in running the magazine, according to Mr. Pearlstine. "We just thought this would be a good use of Carol's time while she was here, he said."

James W. Seymore Jr., who was managing editor of Entertainment Weekly until August, is among the names that have been bandied about as editor of the so-far nameless project.