Northern & Shell, the Express' parent company, registered the name KO! on June 11 in the form of a masthead that resembles Desmond's celebrity title, OK! The coverline is 'A knock-out read for men'.
The title will follow H Bauer's Cut, which is expected to launch on August 12, the same day that the first ABC figures are revealed for founding lads' weeklies IPC's Nuts and Emap's Zoo Weekly. Nuts is likely to exceed Zoo's predicted ABC of close to 200,000.
Cut and KO! are expected to be backed by multimillion-pound ad campaigns.
Nuts and Zoo had launch budgets of £8m each.
An Express spokesman said it was looking at a number of concepts. He added: 'We're not ready to release details of specific timings. And there's no guarantee KO! will be the final name.' However, it is believed that the title will appear by November.
_1.jpg)
.jpg)
