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The launch of TV Easy will be backed by a massive £10m marketing campaign and will coincide with the sponsorship of ITV1’s British Soap Awards 2005.

The new magazine will be compact in size and is being billed as a title to "redefine the TV listings sector".

As with the launch of IPC’s Pick Me Up title in January, TV Easy will be backed by a major sampling with other IPC titles, Woman, Now and Pick Me Up.

Newsstand sales will be available from 3 May in what will be the third major magazine launch – after lads’ mag Nuts and Pick Me Up – by IPC’s innovations team set up in 2003 by the then new chief executive Sylvia Auton.

Auton said: “I made a promise that IPC Media would launch category defining and innovative magazines, and with TV easy we’ve done it again!

“This is the third launch from IPC in 16 months, and reflects Time Warner’s ongoing commitment to growing its magazine business in the UK.

“TV easy is the most comprehensively tested launch IPC has ever undertaken – and the responses have also been the highest we’ve ever recorded.”

Mike Soutar, IPC’s group editorial director, was head of the project alongside Colin Tough, editor of What’s On TV.

The sponsorship deal for the British Soap Awards will form part of a major marketing campaign for the magazine alongside other TV activity and promotions in IPC’s portfolio of titles.

The magazine is expected to go head-to-head with Bauer's TV Choice listings title, which had sales of around 1.1 million copies per issue, according to figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations for July to December.

IPC's other TV listings titles include What's on TV (1.6 million), TV Times (474,000), TV & Satellite Week (211,000) and Soaplife (80,000).

Julie Lavington, publishing director for H Bauer's TV Listings division, said any new launch into the TV listings market would have to be easy to use in terms of navigation, have strong editorial content and choose an appropriate cover price.

She added: "Over the last decade the TV listings magazine market has seen enormous changes with launches into paid for sector and the launch of the free newspaper supplements.

"Television viewing has also seen incredible changes with the rapid growth in digital TV. However despite all this, the paid for listings market remains at the same 5 million copy sales per week as it did a decade ago. All the evidence suggests that a new launch will have little long term effect on the size of the overall market.

"Any sales will have to come from existing titles and with incredible levels of loyalty in the TV listings sector this is no easy task."

Bauer has doubled its share of the TV listings market in the past years by 17% to 32% on the back of the success of TV Choice.

In a robust defence of the title, Lavington said: "Its success is down to its mix of easy to use listings and a strong editorial package all at great value for money. It has an incredibly loyal readership base putting it in a position of great strength to fight off competitor attacks."

By Kevin May