Bloomberg L.P. said Tuesday that it will acquire BusinessWeek magazine from McGraw-Hill for an amount rumored to be in the neighborhood of $2 to $5 million. Recently there had been speculation that it might be sold off for $1 (yes, one dollar) in a deal that would be similar to the one that was negotiated between Macrovision and Open Gate Capital for TVGuide. We’re going to investigate to try to find specifics on the liabilities that Bloomberg might be taking on with this deal. Interestingly the online unit is most likely the real asset in the deal. BusinessWeek.com has more than five million unique visitors each month according to Compete.com
For any media publisher the website has great value. If an investment firm had bought out the publication there’s a very good chance that 80% of the staff would be let go. You could simply outsource your online ad sales to a broker and then keep some of the exsisting sales staff on board for the print sales.
Sadly this is where all print publication is heading. This is purely speculative but I might consider reducing news stand distrubution down to 20% and cut subscription prices by 80% and focus on online ad revenue. Reward loyal readers, try to gain new direct subscribers from the website and stop the bleeding. Otherwise there’s only so many companies that will be able to be rolled up and hope to survive.
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