BusinessWeek Same Price as McChicken
BusinessWeek is for sale! How much do we hear for this, the granddaddy of all business magazines? Do we hear...$1? Anyone?
We knew that it was a bad time for McGraw-Hill to go looking for a buyer for BusinessWeek (which they confirmed today)—the ad sales are down well over 30%l, print is dying, Portfolio's death demonstrated the limitations of the business magazine market—but the fact that the company may sell off BW for $1 is pretty striking. It's doubtful that Bloomberg or anyone else already in the financial news business would want to buy BW, because it would probably be easier and far more cost-efficient to build an online-focused reporting service from the ground up, or invest in the one you already have. So it would take a buyer who wants to jump into the business mega-magazine business in 2009. In other words:
"There is no logical buyer," said one source.
Keith Kelly says the magazine lost $17 million in the first quarter of this year. Bid now!