Frank magazine, the Ottawa satire publication that poked fun at politicians, business leaders and celebrities for almost two decades until folding five years ago, is planning an encore.

Frank will be relaunched online in October with a metered pay wall and a subscription price of between $10-15 per month, similar to Andrew Sullivan’s popular U.S. politics blog The Dish.

“I’ve been excited about recent developments here, and I wrote about my experiences with Mike Duffy and I wished there was a Frank and there was a lot of encouragement,” said editor Michael Bate, who was sued by Duffy for libel and defamation back when Frank was a going concern.

Bate co-founded the Ottawa edition in 1989. It ceased operations in 2004 under a different publisher and was relaunched by Bate the following year.

When Bate decided to call it quits in 2008, he said Frank was not part of the zeitgeist the way it had been in the 1990s. He was working up to 15 hours a day on a “glorified blog,” which didn’t appeal to him.

Despite the roughly online 5,000 subscribers and a peak print circulation of 20,000, the magazine wasn’t getting enough attention or having enough of an impact. More and more publications, he said, were doing what Frank was doing, “we couldn’t compete.”

But Bate now thinks the time is right for Frank to rise again and hopes the magazine will make politicians more accountable.

“Historically our scandals have always been second-rate and we’ve always looked to the Americans for scandal stories about Britney Spears, Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky. But with Rob Ford we have a world-class scandal,” Bate said.

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