When Tom Rogers left NBC to take over Primedia in October 1999, the company he inherited was a sprawling giant with a languishing stock price and no coherent internet strategy.
    In the 15 months since, Rogers has undertaken a dramatic reorganization, cutting costs, shedding unprofitable assets and pursuing partnerships with some of the biggest names in new media.
     Last week’s formation of Media Central, a new unit created in alliance with Brill Media Holdings, stands as the latest example of the former NBC executive’s strategy.
    Despite hitting at least one major snag along the way--the abrupt collapse of the dot.coms--analysts agree that Rogers has been largely successful in his mission to turn the former money-loser that was Primedia into a sleek, integrated company equipped to compete across all media.
    "He’s made a lot of new hires and cut costs and transformed it from a print-dependent company into a platform-neutral company," says Karl Choi, media analyst with Merrill Lynch.
    "What Primedia has now crosses discreet media sectors. What Rogers rightfully sees is some of these borders coming down," agrees Reed Phillips, of DeSilva & Phillips, media investment bankers. "More and more, you’re going to simply be a media company and you have to be on top of what’s going on."
    Rogers came to Primedia from NBC, where he was credited with starting the cable networks CNBC and MSNBC plus its online site, NBCi.
    Despite its  ever-increasing roster of magazines, which includes numerous special-interest titles, as well as mainstream ones like Seventeen and New York, Primedia was losing money and had pretty much failed to capitalize on the internet boom taking place prior to Rogers’ arrival.
    Pressure from Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, which owns 82 percent of Primedia’s stock, forced CEO William Reilly into early retirement.
   Moreover, Primedia’s organization was unwieldy and was said to have lost some focus following the suicide of Harry McQuillen, who was in charge of the company’s magazines until 1997.
   Rogers came in with a four-point plan: to move "Primedia ahead as a preeminent media company integrating print, video, and internet information," as he stated at the time.
    He said the company needed to be reorganized to allow for more growth. And he said Primedia needed to consider divesting some of its businesses and implement cost controls.
    But the first stated element was to become stronger in new media.
   "His strategy was to take over many hundreds of titles and change the image from a magazine company to an online, digitized, twenty-first century company," says Celine Sullivan, executive vice president of Walker Communications.
    "The stock was dead in the water and that was the thing to do."
    During his time at Primedia, Rogers has invested in a number of online companies and has made dramatic, sometimes painful, changes to meet the company’s mission.
    One of the first was to take a charge of $225-275 million to write-down certain assets of the company in fourth quarter of 1999.
   Not surprisingly, a number of top-rank employees have left or been pushed out since Rogers took over, including Dan McCarthy, who was chief executive of the company’s enthusiast titles, and David Tanzer, who held the same position for the company’s consumer magazines. The pair exited in a shakeup of the company’s magazine division that saw more than 50 employees lose their jobs.
    Central to Rogers’ program has been a series of business alliances, acquisitions, and mergers.
   Among them, in March 2000, CMGI and Liberty Media both took a 5 percent stake in Primedia. In June of that year, the company’s enthusiast titles and consumer titles were brought together in a new unit called the Primedia Consumer Magazine and Internet group.
   A month later, a $45 million alliance was formed with nine media companies, including Yahoo, NewsEdge, which is an online repository for news stories, and several other online companies.
   The company’s biggest moves, however, came in October of 2000.
     That’s when Primedia acquired Kagan World Media, which has a number of publications and other services about media, and merged with About.com, in a $690 million deal that was followed by a stock market beating amid the dot.com slowdown. The online company uses expert guides to moderate discussions on over 700 topics.
     Though more or less in keeping with other of his initiatives, the About merger drew the ire of Wall Street. Primedia’s stock, which had rebounded considerably in Rogers’ first year, took an abrupt plunge. It remains at 11 11/16, only one-third its 52-week high.
    Rogers’ latest move was the formation of Media Central, a new unit comprising all of the company’s media-focused properties. Bringing together titles like Folio Magazine and American Demographics, Media Central will be headed by Steven Brill, who founded Court TV, Brill’s Content magazine, and Contentville.com.
    That most recent bid by Rogers to reposition Primedia was seen by analysts as another good move.
    "It’s a sound strategic move," says Sullivan. "It’s the beginning of an effort to expand a respectable website (Mediacentral.com) into an operating unit of Primedia."
    Phillips says: "I see it as a strong business plan. It’s a way to move that part of the company forward and make it more competitive."

-Kevin Downey is a staff writer for Media Life.

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