![]() ![]() Even if the leader of a celebrity-news empire had missed the viral video from the President’s trip, Pecker’s decision to ignore the awkward moment for the First Family was not surprising. “I didn’t see that,” Pecker repeated, and the subject was dropped. One then noted that the footage of Melania’s slap had received a good deal of attention. The half-dozen or so men in the room exchanged looks. ![]() “I didn’t see that,” Pecker said, on the speakerphone. Unfortunately for her, that just seems to be a burrito belly.” A photo in the other skybox was of Pamela Anderson, also in an unbecoming shot, who was, according to the headline, “ Destroyed by Plastic Surgery!” “She got over seventy per cent, even without the benefit of seeing the cover image,” Howard said, referring to a high-school-yearbook photograph of Kelly with an eighties-style perm, which he felt would attract buyers.įor the “skyboxes,” the block headlines above the cover logo, Howard proposed an unflattering recent photograph of the actress Eva Longoria, which had tested at sixty-eight per cent, under the headline “ Packs on 40 pounds!” Howard explained, “We did ask the rep if she’s pregnant. Howard felt optimistic about the Kelly cover, because seventy-three per cent of respondents said that they would be interested in the story. Pecker believes in constant market research, so the Enquirer conducts a rolling telephone poll in which it tests cover-story ideas, summarized in a sentence or two, on readers. Bullet points under the Kelly headline promised revelations about plastic surgery and a “criminal past.” The headline read “ What she’s hiding!,” which Pecker praised because the phrase had worked well on another coverline, “ What Hillary’s Hiding!,” during the Presidential campaign. Lo doesn’t sell,” he said.įor the forthcoming issue of the Enquirer, Howard presented a mockup of a cover on Megyn Kelly, who would be making her début as an NBC News correspondent the week that the issue went on sale. “Of course she’s not pregnant.” But there was another reason for Howard’s disdain. “ Her ‘miracle’ baby at 47!” the cover announced. The issue featured Jennifer Lopez on the cover, with a headline claiming that she was expecting a child with her boyfriend, Alex Rodriguez. Shuffling through a stack of magazines in front of him, Howard pulled out Life & Style, which is owned by Bauer, a German conglomerate. ![]() (which Sheen ultimately acknowledged), and now supervises celebrity coverage for Pecker’s empire. He made his name with a three-year quest to prove that the actor Charlie Sheen had contracted H.I.V. Howard, an ebullient Australian, is thirty-five, and something of a tabloid prodigy. To open a recent meeting, Pecker, who was calling in on speakerphone from Dallas, asked Dylan Howard, A.M.I.’s chief content officer, to review the competition’s covers from the previous week. Pecker knows with some precision which stars sell (Kelly Ripa, Jennifer Aniston, Brad and Angelina, and, for the older generation, Dolly Parton and the Kennedys), and which phrases draw readers (headlines with the words “sad last days” and “six months to live”). The explorer is indexed by celebrities and, uniquely, by words in the headlines. executives how each cover sold in comparison with the magazine’s four- and thirteen-week averages. The “cover explorer,” as it’s known internally, tells A.M.I. ![]() In the past decade, he has devised a proprietary database of the covers of all celebrity magazines, including those of his competitors. Pecker started in the media business as an accountant, and he has attempted to impose a numbers-based rigor on the raucous world of tabloids. A successful Enquirer cover can drive sales fifteen per cent above the weekly average of three hundred and twenty-five thousand copies, and a lemon can hurt sales just as badly, so the choice of cover headlines and photographs represents a nearly existential challenge every week. Virtually all their revenue comes from impulse purchases at the checkout counter. Pecker’s tabloids have few subscribers and minimal advertising. Pecker is the longtime chief executive of American Media, Inc., which owns most of the nation’s supermarket tabloids and gossip magazines, including the Star, the Globe, the Examiner, and OK!, as well as the flagship Enquirer. Every Wednesday afternoon, in a windowless conference room in an office building at the tip of lower Manhattan, David Pecker decides what will be on the cover of the following week’s National Enquirer. ![]()
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