LONDON (Brand Republic) - Powerful Media is understood to have struck a deal to sell its high-profile US media website, Inside.com, to Seventeen and New York Magazine publisher Primedia.
Powerful Media has been shopping for a buyer for the site for some time. Earlier this month, it was said to be in talks with Dutch publisher VNU.
The subscription-based Inside.com was launched in May 2000 to cover the TV, film, publishing and digital industries, but the site has failed to hit its target of signing up 30,000 subscribers.
A sign that things are not going smoothly at the site are the one-time-only discount subscriptions that visitors to the site have been offered over the last couple of weeks.
Ominously, one email reads, 鈥淭ime is running out. As a valued customer to Inside, we are pleased to offer a special discount for a limited time only to join inside.com. Act now and receive a year鈥檚 worth of complete access to industry news and analysis and customised emails covering the business of entertainment and media for only $69.95 -- a saving of 30% plus a subscription to Inside magazine.鈥
In January, Primedia combined its 172 media-related industry titles, including Kagan World Media and Folio Magazine, into a new subsidiary called Media Central. It is into this group that Inside.com would nicely fit. It would also perform a profile-raising exercise for the group. It also recently bought web guide about.com for $690m (£474.72m).
The talks to buy Inside are being led by Steven Brill, chairman and CEO of Media Central and Brill Media Ventures, which owns the magazine Brill鈥檚 Content and e-commerce site contentville.com.
Inside, which employs around 100 staff, is not believed to have run out of money but, with a burn rate of what is reported to be $1m (£0.68m) a month, the site is fast spending the estimated $30m (£20.64m) it raised at launch. Around $10m (£13.76m) of that is believed to have gone on marketing and advertising alone.
Investors, which include research firm Jupiter Communications, Flatiron Partners and Chase Capital Partners, have been pressing for a sale and new investment is unlikely to come while technology markets are in their current weak condition
Aside from VNU, which already owns trade magazines in the media sector including Ad Week and the Hollywood Reporter, Inside is understood to have held informal talks with several companies including Hearst, Conde Nast and Variety, which is published in the US by Reed Elsevier subsidiary Cahners.
As well as the website, the sale would also include the offline magazine, which is a joint venture between The Industry Standard and Powerful Media.
Inside.com was formed by Kurt Andersen, former editor-in-chief of New York Magazine, and Michael Hirschorn, former editor-in-chief of Spin.
www.inside.com
www.about.com
www.contentville.com