The stunning sale of Bauer Publishing’s celebrity titles to American Media Inc. — first reported by Page Six — has produced some awkward situations in tabloid land.
On Friday, AMI tightened its grip on the celebrity magazine market, picking up In Touch, Life & Style and Closer from the German publisher.
AMI, which puts out the National Enquirer, Star, OK! and Radar Online, among others, already purchased Us Weekly from Wenner Media in 2017. So it now controls all the celebrity weeklies apart from People magazine.
But the marriage of the two biggest tabloid companies left is likely to lead to some tricky elevator rides at the 4 New York Plaza offices where the former Bauer staff will be moving in to join the AMI crowd.
One such case is James Heidenry who abruptly quit his AMI job as editor of Us Weekly, OK! and Star in November to go to Bauer to edit In Touch, Life & Style and Closer — and will now be returning to AMI.
Meanwhile, we hear that AMI owner David Pecker addressed his new staff at Bauer’s New Jersey offices Friday morning, and made job offers to the entire staffs of In Touch, Life & Style and Closer.
The company’s strategy has been to squeeze profits from the titles — which have generally been struggling to hold on to readers — by using one staff to produce an ever-growing number of magazines.
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