• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, June 23, 2011

Taste of Home Cooks Up "MasterChef"

As part of a promotion for the second season of Fox's "MasterChef," the show's producers, Reveille and the Shine Group, have partnered with Taste of Home publisher Greendale to create a new, co-branded Taste of Home MasterChef bookazine for distribution in grocery store chains and mass retailers the first week of July.

The 147-page-long bookazine -- Taste of Home's first big licensing deal with a TV partner -- will feature 70 recipes from the show, along with interviews with the show's judges: Gordon Ramsay, Joe Bastianich, and Graham Elliott.

As a special bonus, there are also interviews with the judge's mothers, who were formative influences in their culinary development, a book preview from season one winner Whitney Miller.

Chad Bennett, Reveille's vice president of brand development and production, stated: "There is a natural alignment with "MasterChef" and the content in Taste of Home, as both cater to the amateur chef at home. With more than 3 million subscribers to the print magazine and 3.6 million monthly unique visitors to TasteofHome.com, this presents an amazing opportunity to promote Season 2 of 'MasterChef'."

Taste of Home editor in chief Catherine Cassidy stated the partnership with MasterChef gives "an additional platform to the amateur chef" and added that it will be "the first of many licensing deals with Reveille."

Greendale, a division of the Reader's Digest Association Lifestyle Communities Group, also publishes Healthy Cooking and Simple & Delicious.

AMI Buys OK!

Just a few weeks after rumors circulated that OK! might be bought by Time Inc., the U.S. edition of the weekly celebrity magazine has been purchased by American Media, which publishes the National Enquirer and Star. No price was disclosed for unloading U.K.-based Northern & Shell's troubled title.

Previously, it was reported that Time Inc. offered somewhere between $25 million and $35 million for OK! AMI President, Chairman and CEO David Pecker stated that it "increases our market share in newsstand unit sales from 30 percent to 36 percent. It also allows us to offer our advertisers a wider range of celebrity coverage."

The magazine's weekly circulation of 800,000 has a total readership of 6.6 million. While it has established a highly visible presence on the newsstand, OK! has been dogged by rumors of financial woes and a high rate of turnover in top editorial and publishing positions, including Kent Brownridge, formerly of Alpha Media, publisher of Maxim, who served from September 2008-January 2009; editor in chief Susan Toepfer, who lasted from October 2008-January 2009; creative director Jason Oliver Nixon, who led the all-important cover design for less than a month in May-June 2010; publisher Lori Burgess, who lasted from September 2008 to April 2010; and Publisher Stephen Gregory Barr, who served from May 2010 to February 2011.

The Economist Reports Big Increase in Print Circ

The publisher of The Economist says the magazine is enjoying strong growth worldwide, with total global print circulation increasing 4% to 1,473,939, per the July-December 2010 figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Total advertising revenue increased 15%, thanks in part to a 23% increase in digital advertising.

Traffic to magazine's Web site increased 39% from 2009-2010¸ and the site has attracted 1 million Twitter followers and over 700,000 Facebook fans. The Economist's iPad and iPhone apps have produced roughly 2 million downloads since their debut in November 2010.

Zinio Makes Digital Mags Available to Libraries

Zinio, a leading producer of digital editions of magazines, is making thousands accessible in public libraries in North America, the U.K. and Canada through a new partnership with Recorded Books. Full digital issues of magazines will be available to library visitors through "Zinio for Libraries," with indexes of selected titles on libraries' digital catalogs.

Among other titles, Zinio and Recorded Books are offering library visitors page-for-page digital versions of popular magazines including Consumer Reports, Car & Driver, Good Housekeeping, The Economist, ESPN Magazine and Esquire.