Will Rivals' Price Hike Rescue 'OK'?

Keith Kelly reports that OK magazine (I refuse to use the exclamation point), having burned through $85 million in two years, is on the verge of profitability.

"The days of investments are coming to an end," says editorial director Paul Ashford.

But Kelly's story omits what must be one of the major reasons for OK's rosy projections: Next week, both In Touch and Life & Style will be raising their cover price from $1.99 to $2.99, the same as OK's.

The two Bauer Publishing-owned tabloids combine to sell around 2 million copies on the newsstand in a good week, but the price hike is going to take out a big chunk of that. If OK, offering a more expensively-produced magazine at the same price, can't lure away a couple hundred thousand of those readers, they ought to close up shop and go back to England.

"I think this price hike will save them," a veteran glossy-tabloid executive told me recently. "If I were [OK owner] Richard Desmond, I'd dump a ton of money into marketing right after it happens."