RICHARD Desmond‘s American version of OK! magazine is underwater, losing money at the rate of half a million dollars per week.
Numbers released by Company’s House, the British clearinghouse for financial data from UK corporations, show that the US publishing operation lost $23.4 million last year, and it’s estimated the magazine’s losses will reach close to $130 million by the time it reaches its four-year anniversary in August.
That would put it on target to be one of the most expensive magazine launches in publishing history. By comparison, S.I. Newhouse Jr. is believed to have spent about $120 million in the 2½ years he financed Condé Nast Portfolio, only to fold it earlier this year.
John Huey is believed to have spent over $100 million of Time Inc.’s money on his own ill-fated eCompany Now/Business 2.0 flop.
It’s not just the numbers that are underwater for OK!. The magazine’s Editorial Director Sarah Ivens Moffet was also submerged, at least briefly, over the weekend as she took a tumble into a river while kayaking, wiping out her waterlogged BlackBerry in the process.
Meanwhile, Jason Oliver Nixon, a former Gotham-ite who was brought on board as the creative director and then bounced when he produced the Ashley Tisdale cover that bombed spectacularly two weeks ago, is thinking of suing Desmond.
“I’ve retained counsel,” he said when reached by Media Ink earlier this week, but he declined further comment.
Sources say he was reeling in $10,000 a month, but never got around to formalizing a contract.
Sources say that Nixon feels he was betrayed by his former friend and business partner, Lori Burgess, OK!’s publisher, who was behind the big push to turn it into a more celebrity-and-lifestyle magazine.
Mark Pasetsky, a former p.r. man who was briefly the editor-in-chief of Bauer Publications’ floundering Life & Style, has been brought on board as a consultant to work on juicing-up the covers.
Pasetsky’s first cover last week sold 390,000 — a big improvement over the Tisdale issue, but still well behind the year-earlier weekly newsstand average of more than 419,000.
That’s good news because Desmond is said to be issuing ultimatums that things must rebound by year’s end or else.
Cheat sheets
Kate and Jon Gosselin may not be able to save their rocky marriage but the stars of TLC reality series “Jon & Kate Plus 8” may be single-handedly saving the celebrity magazine world in the midst of a prolonged recession.
If you add up the issues of Us Weekly, People, Star, National Enquirer, In Touch and Entertainment Weekly that featured them on the cover, they have been responsible for newsstand sales of between 14 million and 15 million total copies — which is anywhere from 10 percent to 20 percent above the norm.
Said one tabloid veteran, “They’ll stay with it until one of the issues bombs.”
But as another high-ranking editor pointed out, “There’s really little else going on in the celeb rity world.”
This week may hold a cru cial test for newsstand sales.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are on the cover of People and three other mag azines, while only Us Weekly is going with a Kate and Jon cover again.
Us Weekly was first with the story that Jon was cheating on Kate in its May 11 issue.
Us Weekly, despite a drop in estimated newsstand sales to 800,000 for its cover last week, returned again this week with a record-shattering seventh-consecutive cover appearance for the troubled couple, their sextuplets and twins.
A year ago, Us Weekly was selling an average of only 972,000 a week.
Us Weekly’s first issue with the cheating story, back on May 11, is tied with the June 6 issue for its best-selling newsstand issue of the year, with 1.2 million copies each. keith.kelly@nypost.com