Called The Knowledge, after the street information London's black cab drivers have to memorise before being awarded their licences, the supplement will be distributed to all readers of the Saturday Times inside the M25.
Wells edited Time Out from 1991 to 1998, during which time he took the weekly magazine's circulation over 100,000 for the first time. He left the listings title after a total of 12 years in 1998 to become editorial director at AOL, and joined The Times last year to work on special projects, including The Knowledge.
The supplement will have an A5 format and will carry 64 pages of entertainment listings, including a comprehensive section for family outings, and guides to restaurants and shopping.
The size and pagination of The Knowledge is similar to The Guardian's Guide. The launch follows efforts by The Times to target The Guardian's tight grip on the public sector ad market with the launch of a weekday tabloid section called Public Sector.
The launch will be backed by a marketing campaign through the Times's agency Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R that will include radio, posters and London Underground. The agency won a silver at Cannes last week for some of its Times work.
According to the latest Premier TGI survey, which assesses national readership figures, the Times on Saturday has increased its readership 9.4% year on year, with London and South East readership up 10.7%.
The paper's overall circulation, averaged over Monday to Saturday, is 638,000. Its total readership in the London and South East area is 459,000, out of a national figure of 1.88m.
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