Britney Spears may be coming apart at the seams – but who cares? Her vicious downward spiral has turned into a rare gravy train for the American media.

One LA-based paparazzi company called X17 made a staggering $3 million last year from images of the troubled pop star. The picture of Britney shaving her head fetched them a cool $500,000 – which is phenomenal when compared to the price of between $100 and $800 usually paid out for candid images of celebrities.
Why is there such a fascination with Britney? Ever since her emergence at the age of 17, with the Lolita-pop of ‘(Hit Me) Baby One More Time’, she's been considered ‘hot’. And her music has successfully mined that groove, drifting very successfully into disco soft-porn on tracks like ‘I Am A Slave 4 U’ and ‘Piece Of Me’. But there is more to it than that...
According to Brandy Navarre, co-owner of X17online.com, the answer is simple – because Britney’s descent into the pit over the past three years amounts to the best “reality show” in town.
“It's because Britney lives her life fully, honestly, and openly in front of our cameras,” Brandy tells Hot Press. “The fact that we had such access to her made her interesting at first; then, the fact that she started acting unpredictably made her more interesting. Her life is like the most addictive reality show the public has ever seen.”
X17 aren’t alone in benefiting from the public’s apparently insatiable thirst for Britney gossip. The American version of OK magazine dispatched 10 reporters to LA to work full-time on generating Spears scoops. As OK editor Sarah Ivens puts it: “We’re on constant Britney alert.” And it clearly shows, with Britney appearing on the magazine’s cover 54 times out of a possible 103 issues during the past two years. This major investment of resources is paying off too, with OK’s circulation increasing by 23%.
The publisher of OK, Tom Morrisey, estimates that their Spears focus has helped double their advertising revenue to a whopping $51 million in 2007. Last month, most publications in America suffered drops in circulation, but US Weekly’s actually increased by 25% thanks to the fact that they had a Britney exclusive cover story. No wonder Rolling Stone joined the Britney club with a recent cover feature...

HER LIFE IS A TRAIN WRECK
According to business magazine Portfolio, Britney – who earns something in the region of $9 million a year herself – is worth $120 million to the US economy per annum. They characterise the phenomenon as the Britney Industrial Complex (BIC).
“The Britney economy is the equivalent of a company that employs tens of thousands of people. She’s a goldmine,” proffers Portfolio writer Duff McDonald. “Whether she’s shaving her head or battling for custody of her children, Britney seems to grow more fascinating and, to some people, more lucrative every time she stumbles. As one leg of the Britney economy declines, say record sales, another increases, like her paparazzi value.”
Ironically, X17 are starting to become victims of their own success. In the past, they appeared to have a near-monopoly on exclusive Britney pictures, thanks to the fact that they had a mole in Britney’s camp, tipping them off about her every whereabouts. But X17’s astounding success has since prompted every paparazzi company and publication in the US to also watch Britney’s every move. As a result, X17 are now cutting back on their Britney time.
Last year, they had a team of between seven and 10 photographers following her; they've now reduced it to two or three.
“It’s more difficult to get exclusive images of Britney,” Brandy continues. ”She goes out only occasionally and is always monitored; she’s never doing anything really interesting and our sales of Britney images have gone down. They used to make up about 30% of our sales, which was approximately $3 million or a bit more. That won’t be the case this year, if the current trend continues.”
The difficulty in obtaining exclusive pictures could be down to Britney herself. Rumours abound that she was calling X17 personally with minute details of her daily schedule. One of her former aides recently told the press: “Even though her professional career and personal life are train wrecks and she seemingly is paying little attention to her appearance, she is doing everything she can to make sure she’s photographed almost daily. Britney is obsessed with keeping herself in the public eye. She has told me several times, 'If they don’t see you [in the media], they forget you… I’m not going to let that happen!’”
In the heel of the hunt, with last November’s Blackout she released by far her best album ever, in many ways out-Madonna-ing Madonna – and suggesting in the process, for the first time, that she may well have an artistic life beyond ephemeral pop and the paparazzi that go with it. It just might be her salvation yet.