Business

DING DONG, BONNIE’S GONE

JUST a week after denying that she and American Media were negotiating a severance package, the controversial – and much traveled – Bonnie Fuller no longer has her $2.5 million-a-year job as executive vice president and chief editorial director of the company.

Fuller’s contract was set to expire March 31, 2009, but relations between Fuller and American Media CEO David Pecker have been frosty for a while.

Fuller insists it was her idea to leave AMI and become a consultant and editor-at-large to Star.

“It was definitely my idea,” she said.

Sources said the talks have been ongoing for weeks while Fuller searched for another job.

Ever since Fuller was removed as Star magazine’s day-to-day editor in early 2007 and replaced by Candace Trunzo, insiders said Fuller has appeared to have no real role within AMI, despite keeping her title as editorial director of the entire company.

Nevertheless, she maintained she’s been hard at work at the company.

“I’ve been incredibly busy,” she said, adding she has supervised redesigns of Fit Pregnancy, Country Weekly and Men’s Fitness.

But insiders said she also seemed to be spending more time on the West Coast.

On its face, Fuller was out there trying to raise Star’s profile among the entertainment and gossip TV shows. But the swirl inside was that Fuller was looking for her next magic act.

In the end, few are sorry to see her leave AMI.

“I am sure there is rejoicing in AMI,” said one of her many former staffers, who has since left the industry.

When Pecker originally bought Fuller on board, she was seen as a hard-driving editor who burned through staff but produced newsstand results at Us Weekly, Hearst’s top-selling Cosmopolitan and Condé Nast’s big money maker, Glamour.

But she was also famous for jumping ship whenever someone came along with a sweeter offer.

She landed at AMI in mid-2003 after Pecker, looking to transform his company, swooped in with a job offer while she battled it out with Us Weekly parent Wenner Media over the terms of a new contract to which she had agreed verbally but never signed.

Despite a $30 million makeover that transformed Star from a newspaper-stock supermarket tabloid into a glossy weekly about a year into her run, its newsstand sales plunged.

For the six months ended June 30, 2003, the Audit Bureau of Circulations show Star sold an average of 1,023,547 copies a week on the newsstand and another 235,454 in subscriptions, for total circulation of 1,259,001. For the six-month period ending Dec. 31, 2006, newsstand sales tumbled 14 percent to 798,779 copies a week, compared with a year ago, even as less lucrative subscription sales had inflated the total circulation to 1,542,218.

When advertisers didn’t pony up enough ad dol lars to support the higher circulation, the company was forced to slash its rate base to its current level of 1,350,000.

Sources said that Pecker was skittish about granting Fuller another three-year contract when the last one expired in 2006.

But the company’s financial backers, Evercore Partners and THL Partners, were worried that a non-renewal would be construed as a sign that the company was strapped for cash and could not afford to pay the high-octane editor.

In addition, Pecker was in the midst of restating AMI’s earnings, and had run through a number of chief financial officers. He didn’t want to create a new source of trouble with the press or a new source of discontent with the board by not renewing the pact.

As a result, Fuller received another three-year deal.

Under terms of her current contract Fuller received a base salary of $1.5 million, with an annual incentive bonus of at least $500,000, and a target of $1 million, based on performance criteria.

She was to be granted $80,000 a year in car-service payments, but offered to forgo that in order to preserve the job of her executive assistant, who was about to be axed in a corporate downsizing.

She also was set to receive a reimbursement for health care of $18,000 per year and a payment or reimbursement of up to $20,000 for hair and makeup at business-related appearances.

Although the contract still has nearly a year to run, sources say she will probably collect only about 50 cents to 60 cents on the dollar on it.

Asked what her next gig would be, Fuller hinted she might have news very shortly.

Only a week ago, when Media Ink called to inquire about her severance and job search, Fuller vehemently denied anything was afoot. Her mother – to whom she was very close -died April 22 and Fuller insisted nothing was in the works.

Through AMI spokesman Richard Valvo, Fuller stated on May 6, “I know how this started. It’s a terrible rumor. I have been out of the office for nearly three weeks, one week or so while my mom was sick and now she passed away and I have been sitting shiva all week. It is not true at all. I am not looking for another job and I am NOT negotiating this contract with AMI to leave. Please tell Keith if he does this while I am sitting shiva it would be terrible to me.” keith.kelly@nypost.com