Viacom's MTV has given the green light to one of the magazine industry's longest-gestating projects, its own branded magazine. Hmmm, hopefully they won't repeat the same articles too often. After years of on-again, off-again discussions with potential publishing partners, including Wenner Media (dating to the 1980s) and most recently Hearst Magazines, MTV has decided to go it alone. Negotiations with Hearst ended several months ago, after the two companies allegedly disagreed over who would ultimately have creative control. With help on the business side from sibling Nickelodeon magazine, MTV will test the waters with single-topic, newsstand-only October (due on stands Oct. 21) and December issues that will have strong tie-ins to programming on the network. If the issues are successful, plans are to go bimonthly in 2004. MTV Magazine's circulation rate base will be 300,000. The themed-issue approach "allows us to present MTV, the brand, over time in a series of issues, rather than be all-MTV under one cover," says Dan Sullivan, senior vp/group publisher of MTV Networks' Nickelodeon Magazine Group. "If it's big on MTV, it'll be big in MTV. We'll tap into the stories and events on the channel and amplify those in the issues." Whatever happend to Blah Blah Blah? Full article here.