Gemstar-TV Guide International Inc. has announced it would publish a full-sized magazine featuring celebrity interviews and TV and lifestyle articles as a companion to its flagship television publication on newsstands and supermarket checkout counters nationwide by mid-spring.

Steve LeGrice, hired this week as editor-in-chief, said he had no distribution figures for the magazine, to be called Inside TV and which would target young women.

“It is newsstand drive, so we’re in the business of selling as many we can,” said LeGrice, who was executive editor of American Media Inc.’s Star magazine for 10 years before launching In Touch Weekly in 2002. “If that’s a million, that’s great. If it’s 2 million, that would be even better.”

The magazine will be based in New York and will have a staff independent of TV Guide’s, but LeGrice said he will report to TV Guide Editor Ian Birch.

TV Guide, the nation’s top-selling magazine with 9 million weekly sales according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, has fallen from its peak of nearly 20 million subscribers in the 1970s. Gemstar invested $20 million in 2003 to redesign TV Guide to try to reverse a trend of declining ad pages and dropping circulation. Gemstar reported revenues for its publishing division for the three months ended Sept. 30, 2004 was down 11 percent to $90.6 million from the like period in 2003.