Bonnie Fuller renewal in some doubt

[This post has been UPDATED] The bloom may be off Bonnie Fuller's rose, as there is some question whether the sweet deal she negotiated three years ago to be editorial director at American Media Inc. will be renewed, at least on the same generous terms. Fuller, as most people in the Canadian media know, got her start here, at the Toronto Star and Flare, then became something of a shooting star in New York at Women's Wear Daily and Glamour.

According to a story in Women's Wear Daily, CEO David Pecker is balking at the terms, particularly in light of the flagging newsstand sales of Star, the publication which Fuller was brought aboard to revitalize. The story says, in part:

"Fuller's contract provides her with $1.5 million per year in base salary, plus bonuses tied to the newsstand performance of Star magazine and other titles. Fuller was guaranteed a bonus of $500,000 in 2004 as an incentive for leaving her job at Us Weekly, but in 2005, she earned only $74,851 in bonus pay, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The trend in Star's single-copy sales suggests she won't be earning much in incentives for 2006, either. Almost all of Star's May and June issues have sold fewer than 700,000 copies on the newsstand, according to competitors' projections, compared with 863,508 in the second half of 2005."

[UPDATE] A story in Folio: says that American Media Inc. is considering selling five of its special interest properties, although keeping Star, National Enquirer, Shape and Men's Fitness.
The titles being put on the block together generate about $30 million in operating income: Muscle and Fitness, Flex, Muscle and Fitness Hers (combined U.S. readership of 8 million.), Country Weekly, a 10-year-old weekly with a total readership of 3.3 million) and Mira, the largest Hispanic magazine in the U.S., with a readership of more than 850,000.

[Further UPDATE] In MediaDaily News, the following: "The move comes on the heels of AMI's earlier closing of three titles, Celebrity Weekly, MPH, a car mag, and Shape en Espanol, in an attempt to straighten out AMI's finances. According to Deborah Solomon, senior partner and group research director for MindShare, the closing of some of these magazines spelled hard times ahead for other niche magazines, including men's titles: "What men are reading is car books and computer books, but we've just seen that AMI's car magazine, MPH, which generally targeted young men, is closing. That's not good." Pecker also moved AMI tabloid giant National Enquirer back from New York to Boca Raton, Florida."