HELLO!

'''Hello!''' is a weekly magazine specialising in celebrity news and gossip, published in Britain. ''Hello!'' sells editions in Britain, Ireland, UAE, Spain, Mexico, Turkey, Russia, Thailand, Greece, Canada, and starting in 2007 Serbia. ^[1]

Contents

History

Content

Competition

Curse Of ''Hello!''

Litigation

Reader trivia

References

External links

History

Owned by Spanish publisher Eduardo Sanchez Junco, and edited by Ronnie Whelan, ''Hello!'' was first published in 1988 and is a spin-off of the Spanish magazine ''¡Hola!''. Between 1998 and 2004 there was also a French version, ''Ohla !''.
Although upmarket and away from the real-life formats of the traditional weekly and supermarket checkout ladies magazine, media critics laughed at ''Hello!'s fawning interviews with minor European royals and celebrities. But the highly targeted format quickly built a readership of 2 million copies per issue.
Mexican publications started in 2006, before this year, Spanish editions of the magazines were sold as domestical product and even had Mexican Price printed on its cover.

Content

The weekly content of ''Hello!'' is fairly fixed, but the focus shifts as the ''Celebdaq''-style rating of the various celebrities rises and falls:

★ "Diary of the Week" - photographic coverage of high society and celebrity events

★ "Panorama" - an image-based review of current world events

★ "Inside Story" - provides an insight into
★ "Cookery and Travel" sections - focused expansions of the "Fashion and Lifestyle" section

Competition

''OK!'' magazine launched in 1990, and went weekly in 1996. Very similar to ''Hello!'' even down to its use of an exclamation mark, it focused in traditional Richard Desmond entry mode by going slightly more down market than ''Hello!'' It now outsells ''Hello!'' by five to three per edition. ^[2]
Not long after ''OK!'' went weekly, the first of a new raft of celebrity magazines aimed at more mass-market readership than both ''Hello!'' and ''OK!'', hit the newsstands. ''Now'' was launched in 1997, joined by ''Heat'' in 1999 and then ''Closer'' in 2002.
Today, ''Hello!'' and rival ''OK!'' often try to out-scoop each other, by buying up exclusive rights to celebrity weddings and interviews - driving up the price of such events to allow certain celebrities to do little else but live their lives through this celebrity-driven media.

Curse Of ''Hello!''

''Hello!'' pays large sums of money for exclusive coverage of celebrity weddings. It has been noticed by the press that a large proportion of such weddings break up extremely quickly, an effect known jokingly, as "the curse of ''Hello!''" / "Hello! Goodbye!".

Litigation

★ 2003 - Catherine Zeta Jones and Michael Douglas sued ''Hello!'' for publishing unauthorised photographs of their wedding. Rival magazine ''OK!'' had an exclusive contract for pictures of the wedding, and also sued ''Hello!'' In November 2003, ''OK!'' was awarded £1,033,156 in damages, and Jones and Douglas received £14,600.

★ 2006 - ''Hello!'', which secured the British rights to the first images of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's newborn daughter, launched legal action with ''People'' against two websites that printed a leaked exclusive shot of the couple with their new baby daughter. The leaked photo, which contains ''Hello!'' magazine's logo, shows a headline which reads: "The biggest exclusive of the year. Angelina and Brad with their new Baby Shiloh Nouvel." ''People'' magazine reportedly paying more than $4 million USD to secure the American rights. ^[1]

Reader trivia

''Hello!'' provides specific and extra-ordinary details about its readership, including:

★ 82% are women

★ ''Hello!'' readers are 71% more likely than the average female to choose a car mainly on looks

★ ''Hello!'' readers spent £64 million on microwave ovens in 2004

★ 91% of ''Hello!'' readers enjoy an alcoholic drink.

★ ''Hello!'' readers spend nearly £93 million on food every week.

★ Only 4% of ''Hello!'' readers buy tinned tomatoes, as of February 2003.

★ ''Hello!'' readers are also 64% more likely to vote for an electoral candidate based on his or her hairstyle rather than policies.

References

1. Brangelina 'million dollar baby' sparks legal war
2. Well, yes, OK!: Porn to be king
3. Brangelina 'million dollar baby' sparks legal war

External links

★ ''Hello!'' magazine website

★ Everything2 article on ''Hello!''