Gossip Wedding of the Century: Star Magazine Buys OK! Magazine

American Media Inc., publisher of the National Enquirer, Star and Shape, said Thursday it acquired the US edition of OK! magazine from Northern & Shell.

AMI says the deal will bolster its position in the competitive market for celebrity magazines.

OK! has a paid US circulation of about 800,000 copies, nearly half of which are sold on the newsstand, but the UK publisher has absorbed heavy losses on the publication since launching OK! in the US in 2005, leading to Northern & Shell's recent decision to shop it.

AMI executives said the acquisition will help the publisher better compete with the leading celebrity titles for advertising because it adds OK! and its relatively young audience to a roster of celebrity-focused properties that includes Star and RadarOnline.com.

OK! and Star have a combined circulation of about 1.7 million, just below the nearly two million copies a week for Wenner Media's US Weekly, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Like a number of print publishers, AMI has been battered in recent years by advertising declines that have hampered the publisher's ability to manage its debt. At the end of last year, AMI restructured through a pre-packaged bankruptcy that reduced its debt to just over $500 million, down from $1.1 billion at the beginning of 2009.