• Ad Age , Monday, August 7, 2006 12 PM

The first half of 2006 was very competitive for celebrity weeklies, Ad Age reports. Most showed improvement in a key measure of customer interest: the newsstand. According to some estimates, Time Inc.'s People magazine continued to lead in single-copy sales with an average of more than 1.5 million copies a week--up about 2 percent over the first half of 2005. People's issue featuring the first photos of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt sold 2.2 million copies. No. 2 Us Weekly sold an average of more than 1 million newsstand copies, a 1 percent gain in the face of a higher cover price. But American Media's Star was down 14 percent. David Leckey, evp-consumer marketing at American Media, says total circulation increased a little more than 6 percent on the strength of subscriptions that grew 39 percent. Star sales in July are averaging about 13 percent above first-half sales. "Hopefully, we're seeing a little price recovery and the return of traffic to the grocery stores," he says.

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