Star shoots for weekly celebrity television guide

The Daily Star is launching a 56-page weekly television guide called Startime on Saturday.

The new magazine marks a multi-million pound investment in the red-top by new owners Northern & Shell. Startime will contain weekly listings for satellite, digital and terrestrial programmes, as well as cinema listings and details of video, DVD and music releases.

About 20 pages will be dedicated to behind-the-scenes features on hit TV shows and exclusive celebrity interviews.

A Daily Star spokeswoman said access to OK! magazine’s TV listings precipitated the launch of the Saturday supplement.

“The Daily Star always wanted a magazine and it made sense to use the listings from OK!,” she said.

The Daily Star’s new magazine is the first sign of N&S chairman Richard Desmond’s promised investment in the Express Newspapers’ titles following his acquisition of United News & Media national newspaper interests last month.

It also indicates how he intends to use N&S’s magazine assets, in particular OK! magazine’s celebrity connections, to add value to both the Daily Star and the Daily Express.

This article was first published on Media Week