Sussing out a buyer
for BusinessWeek
In this weak economy, who wants money-losing business title?
By Louisa Ada Seltzer
Jul 14, 2009
After word leaked yesterday that BusinessWeek is on the block, the big question became who would want to acquire the long-ailing publication during what’s been a brutal recession for magazines.
Yesterday speculation began focusing on News Corp.’s Dow Jones or Bloomberg, the news service that broke word of the sale. Talks with the latter reportedly started, but quickly stopped, last fall.
Analysts say that the most likely bidders are companies that already have financially focused editorial, as those two do. BusinessWeek could be folded into an existing publication in order to save money on staff redundancies.
It would also help if the bidder already had a strong web presence, because that’s something that’s been lacking for BusinessWeek.
While competitors such as Forbes were investing in their web sites and building them into strong publications in their own right, BusinessWeek dawdled. The magazine, which underwent a redesign and refocusing two years ago, has only recent begun to court readers aggressively on the web, through social network outreach and Twittering.
Just how much parent company McGraw-Hill will reap from the sale is also a huge question. The magazine is not worth what it once was, that is for certain. In fact, it may not be worth much more than a pocket of change.
Several reports out today speculate that the sale could be modeled on that of TV Guide, which last year went for $1 and the assumption of outstanding liabilities.
BusinessWeek has been losing money for years. It never fully recovered from the previous recession, with its ad pages falling by more than a third between 2004 and 2008, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.
Those losses accelerated during the first half of 2009, when BusinessWeek’s declines were steeper than the bulk of the business titles tracked by Media Life. Ad pages for those nine titles were off 33.4 percent year to date, while BusinessWeek fell 36.8 percent.
Fortune and Forbes, BusinessWeek’s major competitors, both generated more ad revenue during the first half of the year than BusinessWeek.
McGraw-Hill, which confirmed that it is “exploring strategic options” for the business title, showed patience for years with BusinessWeek while divesting itself of other titles. But it’s apparently no longer willing to wait and see if advertising will bounce back because the company is struggling in other areas.
The owner of Standard & Poor’s and publisher of textbooks has already said its revenue will decline by up to 5 percent this year, and that’s with a number of layoffs this year and last.
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