Northern & Shell tests Hot Stars as standalone title

by Claire Billings,, Brand Republic 26-Mar-03, 11:10

LONDON - Northern & Shell is reported to be running a trial of Hot Stars, the celebrity magazine that comes free with OK!, as a standalone title.

The company is understood to be testing sales of the magazine in stores in Northern Ireland. However, no one at Northern & Shell was available to confirm the details at the time of writing.

Until now, Hot Stars has only been available as a bound insert with OK!, Northern & Shell's celebrity magazine for the more mature reader.

Hot Stars is seen by the industry as a blatant rip-off, in terms of its layout and content, of Emap's Heat and is targeted at the same 15- to 34-year-old audience.

Its launch as a standalone magazine will be the publisher's second attack on established celebrity market titles, following the launch of New! last month, which is seen as a copy of IPC Media's Now.

Although the style of New! is very similar to that of Now's, New! is not expected to hurt sales of the IPC title because, at almost half its established rival's price at 60p, it is expected to become an additional buy to celebrity gossip-hungry consumers' existing buying habits.

If Hot Stars launches on the newsstand, it is expected that it would employ similar tactics to New! and be sold at a much lower price than Heat's £1.45.

It is thought unlikely that Hot Stars would damage sales of Heat, which posted a circulation of 554,644 in the last set of ABCs, a 15% increase on the previous period, and a 56.1% year-on-year rise.

New! also publishes a day before Heat and Now, taking advantage of the fact that consumers will be starting to get hungry for their next instalment of celebrity gossip.

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