Rogers says you had me at Hello!

Rogers Media will be launching a branch plant version of the celebrity title Hello! next fall. It will be a Canadianized version (made so by an editorial staff of 10 about to be hired) with about 60% of the content shared with its international editions. Hello! started in Spain as Hola! and is a huge seller in Great Britain. The UK edition, which sells about 7,000 copies on Canadian newsstands, will be replaced by the "Canadianized" edition, which Rogers projects will sell 25,000. It was reported today in Mastheadonline, where you can read more about it.

The whole celebrity publishing thing has exploded in Canada. OK, another big seller, has launched in North America. Torstar Corp started the Weekly Scoop a few months ago. They join a field crowded by such titles as In Touch Weekly and the more traditional tabloids and "women's" magazines (like Woman's World). All of these titles rely on similar things: celebrity reporting, aggressively tacky and kinetic design, whacks of colour and newsstand sales.

Publishing enthusiasms such as this, with a proliferation of titles, are sometimes similar to the stock market; once the mainstream starts buying in, the opportunities are probably already gone. How long this passion for vapid, and repetitive, celebrity reporting will last is anyone's guess. All that can be said for certain is that not all the new celebrity titles will be around two years from now.