Blackenterprise.com gets drastic makeover

BY THE SHOGUN The folks over at Black Enterprise magazine rolled out a re-designed blackenterprise.com and what we see is a drastic makeover that in our opinion, wasn't really necessary. The new site is missing something but we can't quite put our finger on it. The logo has also been revamped. Will this new logo roll out in print as well? We should hope so being that they would want to keep the branding consistent. Guess they were going for a cleaner look, but its a little too clean for us.

Its so bad, Time Inc is begging people to quit

-BETH Time Inc isn't issuing pink slips anymore they are begging people to quit. OK so it's not Time Inc's problem if an employee has a shit load of medical bills and a mortgage knocking at foreclosure's door, its just what they have to do to keep their already rich shareholders happy so they can enjoy their lavish Holiday vacations with their spoiled unappreciative children and botox addicted wives/husbands. Time Inc CEO Ann Moore is only doing her job as CEO. Hell, things are so bad at Time Inc, she appointed herself head of the entertainment group in addition to her roll as CEO. It doesn't get any real than that The call for volunteers to take a severance package applies to a relatively small part of the company’s work force: writers, editors, photographers and researchers at a handful of magazines who are represented by the Newspaper Guild. Those magazines include Time, People, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money. Terms of the severance were not disclosed. Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes is really pushing to make the company look good on paper isnt he? With revenue down 6.8 percent and all. He is coming up on his one year mark as CEO of the obese Time Warner, wonder how he's been doing? We will be taking a look at that, but being that AOL is still squeezing the life out of the company and Time Inc is still struggling to get its footing, it's not looking too good. Hey we endorsed you earlier on out, I hope we didn't make a mistake.

Can layoffs and shuttering magazines save publishers?

-BETH Don't expect to see people like Time Inc CEO Ann Moore, Conde Nast's Si Newhouse, Wenner's Jann Wenner, American Media's David Pecker, Hearst's Cathy Black, Niche Media's Jason Binn or any other heads of magazine publishing companies head to Washington to beg for a bailout. Unfortunately for these CEO's the only way around keeping their companies from sinking is to think about how many people to let go, how many magazines to kill, who they can merge with or all of the above. Then again those are pretty much your options if you're not a Wall Street firm. Sure some of these over paid magazine execs can take a pay cut to show their employees that they're hurting too, but we all know that would be a patronizing move being that all the individuals mentioned above and some not mentioned are millionaires. This year alone, we have seen magazine's folded or cut down in shocking numbers. Magazine industry employees haven't felt more unstable. So what are these hurting magazine publishers to do? Canceling the Holiday party like Hearst did is understandable, but it does nothing for moral and it magnifies the reality. What are these poor publishing execs to do? Would merging with a competitor help? Perhaps in the looooong run it would on the cost saving end, but a merger of two magazine powerhouses will no doubt lead to bigger layoffs and probably would end in a crumpled ball of fire due to a clash of nuclear egos. Another option is to continue to fold magazines targeting almost identical audiences into one another. Wait. But that too would lead to layoffs. Companies like Time Inc and American Media have divisions they can look to spin off to raise cash to keep their business from towing the line of failure. But then they will burn through that cash in no time, and who if anyone really wants to by any business wrapped in a troubled industry like magazine publishing right now anyway? Some publishers have resorted to cutting the small things employees appreciate, like free water & coffee, though some employees won't miss especially the coffee because come on, who drinks office brewed coffee? So what is a publishing company to do? Will we see a major magazine publisher go under, selling off its brands for pennies?

The new Time.com front page sucks big time

-BETH Time.com quietly launched a new front page some weeks ago and its a good thing they chose a to sneak it out. Its like they tossed it out to see what the reaction would be. Well here ya go if you haven't heard it already, it sucks big time. Not only does the Time logo get lost on the page, but the page on a whole just looks like one big vomit puddle. Note to Time, change it and change it quick.

Time Inc reorg still lacks major changes needed for current climate

-BETH Back in March Mediawiredaily.com laid out what we thought was needed to tune up Time Inc and it's business divisions. We mentioned that Time Inc was just too big and needed to be cut down in size. Over the past two years, Time Inc CEO Ann Moore has been trimming things at the magazine giant but she was focused mostly on reducing the head count. We mentioned in our article back in March that Moore needs to also focus on the many businesses operating under the Time Inc umbrella and toy with the idea of selling, or consolidating some of these businesses. Well earlier this week Moore again rolled some heads, a reported 600 or more, but structurally the company remains the same as far as it's businesses. Under the reorg, effective Oct. 29, Time Inc.’s 24 magazines and related Web sites will be grouped into three business units based on similarity of audience and advertisers. Each will have its own general manager who will report to Time Inc. evp and CFO Howard Averill. Unfortunately for Ms. Moore, we already see a problem with this reorg. She has some what detached herself from the heartbeat of the company and has inserted a middle man Time Inc. evp and CFO Howard Averill. In our opinion, she should have these three new business heads reporting directly to her, and keep the company's money man focused on money issues. Another major mistake in our opinion is Moore taking leadership of the entertainment group comprising People, InStyle, Entertainment Weekly and Essence. This will no doubt subtract some attention away from the big picture duties of the CEO. We know this whole thing is to save money but appointing yourself to head a magazine group within the company you're CEO of is just setting yourself up. Bottom line, Time Inc is still in need of a major shake up. But it looks as though this major shake up will come after Ann Moore moves on.

If you work for a magazine publisher, don't be fooled by management, you're fucked!

-BETH So you work in the magazine publishing business, and heads are rolling all around you at other magazine publishers. Word starts to spread that cuts may be coming to your company as well and you start to worry because you just started your holiday shopping and you planned to take a nice vacation in the New Year. Your boss hears all this talk about cuts coming and calls a meeting to assure you and your co-workers that everything is fine and the company is doing well. Don't buy it, chances are cuts are coming and you and your boss's names are on the list and he or she doesn't even know it. From Directors on down, sometimes from Vice Presidents on down, don't know shit about whats really going on in the corporate suite of a company. So my message to you is........ hell who am I kidding? This is what I had to do after getting the boot from the magazine publisher I worked for. Guess what? My boss gave us the talk, two weeks before bunch of us were escorted by security out of the building.

American Media President John Miller gets thrown off David Pecker's sinking ship to make it a little lighter

-BETH Mediawiredaily is on the path back to "Greatness". We will be publishing content here and there going into the new year. Come 2009, we plan to be back full time and on fire. Mediawiredaily.com is the only media business blog you can go to and get that real "St8t Talk" and no holds barred commentary on the media industry's movers and shakers. We will also be getting a little face lift for the new year. Nothing major. Just a little nip a tuck and a pull. On another note- according to a source, American Media Inc's number two man John Miller has left the company. According to the source, word came late Friday via a very short email that David Pecker's day to day man was gone and nothing else was said. According to the source, things have been uneasy at the tabloid publisher, and with Miller's departure it only makes things worst. Perhaps Pecker got rid of Miller to help cover some costs with the recent takeover of Radaronline.com which the company plans to transform into a TMZesque destination. Hmmm!! A little too late on that one we think. Its doubtful Pecker will look to fill Miller's spot. He may opt to split the day to day duties between two top lieutenants. Dave Leckey, currently listed on the company website as the Executive Vice President, Consumer Marketing and Kevin Hyson, Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer may have both just gotten an early Holiday gift or headache. Developing...

Susan Lyne in waiting to take over at Time Inc!?

-JOANNE She may have denied it time and time again but former Martha Stewart Living CEO Susan Lyne wasn't fooling anyone but herself. For over a year she has been rumored to be a favorite to take over as Time Inc CEO when current boss-lady Ann Moore exits the Time & Life building for good. During the start of said rumors, Lyne denied she was leaving MSO anytime soon. But as you all can now recall she left MSO a few weeks ago and is said to have had lunch with, or plans to have lunch with Ann Moore. Could Moore be briefing the new boss-elect on the current climate at the company? Could the meeting have been set up by Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes so both ladies can become acquainted? Could Lyne move in as CEO before Moore departs? We think so! Ann Moore could turn over her CEO duties and title to Lyne in the coming months while holding on to the Chairmanship during the changing of the guards. Taking on the gigantic Time Inc and reporting to a results driven boss like Bewkes will be a whole new challenge for Lyne, but we think she can do the job. Wait a minute. There are also these rumors about Lyne running Oprah's new OWN Network. But wasn't MTV CEO Judy McGrath's name floated for that job too?

Nielsen swatting employees like flies in its business media division

This comes days after the company announced it will pay $225 to acquire IAG Research, Inc By SDH Nielsen is rolling heads at its media business unit with a concentration in the company’s digital and conference and expo groups. The company just days ago announced that it was buying IAG Research, a privately held company based in New York that measures consumer engagement with television programs, national commercials and product placements for $225 million. Can you imagine what the heads being rolled are saying? This is probably Nielsen’s way of trying to offset that cost? At the end of the day, Nielsen is clearly more interested in tracking how much we watch TV and surf the web than the publications in their Business Media Unit. Their growth avenue is consumer behavior, so why not sell the Business Media Unit, pay down some debt and call it a day.

As it turns out, everyone at Reader’s Digest Association is alive and well and busy

By SDH So after our post about the odd silence from Reader’s Digest Association we got an email from RDA’s Director of Public Relations Ellen Morgenstern basically telling us that all is well at RDA and the company has been hard at work on some projects. The company is currently upgrading their corporate websites which explains the lack of news updates. They are working on new launches and other business expansions. Just like we thought, they are just busy being busy. Can’t wait to see the finished products.

Its either silent time at Reader’s Digest Association or they all died of carbon monoxide poisoning

By SDH We're almost two weeks into the second quarter of 2008 and we haven't heard a peep from Reader's Digest Association which could mean many things. RDA CEO Mary Berner either has the troops sticking to a new policy the says all under her rule must remain quiet for the first quarter of every New Year, there may be nothing exciting going on at RDA to share with the rest of the media world, or Berner has her team in place and they are hard at work. We can go on but we would just be wasting our time because it's probably one of the reasons we mentioned above! We were just looking around for the hot topics of the morning and Mary Berner just happened to pop into our heads, so we checked the RDA corporate website for any news release we may have missed but the 2008 section of the site's press release page is empty, the link isn't even live. Anyway, we're waiting Mary, please share some news fast.

Entrepreneur magazine on the block for a sweet $200 million, Mansueto Ventures not interested

By SDH Entrepreneur Media the parent company of Entrepreneur Magazine says that the title is on sale for $200 million, even though last week Entrepreneur Media Prexy Lou Pearlman denied the magazine was on sale, saying instead that he was looking for some cash to grow the business. Yeah! Bids are already reportedly pouring in but no word on who the bidders are. What some say would be the ideal new owner for Entrepreneur, Mansueto Ventures, say they are not interested in buying the magazine because they are already working on their own magazine geared towards Entrepreneurs. Well we think it would be a little easier to just buy Entrepreneur at a lower price of course and just slap a new name on it, no? Advertising revenue for Entrepreneur was $94.5 million in 2007—flat (down 0.1 percent) over the previous year, according to the most recent Publishers Information Bureau figures. Ad pages dropped 6.6 percent (to 1,238.74) last year. Entrepreneur’s total paid circulation average—609,765—was flat for the second half of 2007, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations FAS-FAX. Its single copy sales average, which make up a fraction of the magazine’s circ, increased 13.1 percent to 48,238. Perlman, however, said the company is “bucking the trend in a down market,” citing growing online revenues. Entrepreneur Goes on the Block [Folio]

Folio Magazine releases their annual stroke job list of magazine industry influencers and innovators

By SDH Folio Magazine the magazine about magazines and the people who markets them does it again with their popular Folio 40 list where magazine industry execs get to see their names in print and read all the nice things Folio, whose subscribers are said execs, has to say about them. Each magazine industry professional listed on the Folio 40 will no doubt continue the stroke job via an internal press release to their employees shoving the accomplishments in their faces as if it benefits anyone but themselves. We bet they will also update their resumes mentioning this listing as well. The list hi-lites those making bold and smart moves in the industry via the following categories: the Visionaries, the doers, the influencers, those under the radar and of course the ones to watch. Our good old buddy (in our heads of course) Jeff Bewkes made the list under the “Ones to watch” category because according to Folio: All eyes have been on Jeff Bewkes since he took the helm of the mega media company January 1. Even before Bewkes' appointment was announced, speculation about Time Inc.'s future ran rampant. Bewkes has since downplayed the possible sale of the publishing division, but the industry will have to wait and see. Wow!! He made the list for this? We think David Pecker would have been better in Bewkes’s place with a merger still possible for AMI and all the other shit that Pecker has all over his hands. At this point to include Bewkes on the list seems like a quick space filler. If not Bewkes or Pecker, then Time Inc CEO Ann Moore, because whatever decision Bewkes makes regarding the future of Time Inc, wouldn’t it be based on what Moore can squeeze out before her contract runs out of steam?

No major media company made the Businessweek 50, is this a good thing or a bad thing, and do big media CEOs even care?

By SDH This week’s issue of Businessweek is all about the Businessweek 50 (BW 50). It’s a list of the 50 best performing companies in their respective industries. It is no surprise to see companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon on the list. It’s also no surprise that there are no major media companies on the list. Why? Well with the exception of maybe Disney, media companies haven’t really been performing well at all. Companies like News Corp dropping cash left and right for other companies doesn’t mean all is well. The BW 50 is dominated by companies in tech, energy, beverages and science. So should big media CEOs take this as a sign that they need to ramp up their businesses or do they take lists like the BW50 as just that, a list? We’re sure most of them wouldn’t have mind having their company listed as one of the best performing. Guess they just didn’t meet the requirements.

Latina Magazine Editor Mimi Valdes has an eye for fashion

By SDH Under new Editrix Mimi Valdés Ryan, Latina Magazine is getting snazzier with a heavier focus on fashion. Editors before her never attended fashion week but Valdez ended that when she attended New York Fashion Week. Under Valdez the magazine also revamped its logo we guess to look fashionier, and the rate base was upped to 500,000. Wonder how Circulation Director Raymond Dryden will utilize some of these changes to bring in new business. With a stronger focus on fashion, this opens the door to more prospects. Advertisers are beginning to take notice, but they want to wait a few issues to see the response to the redesign (which began with the March issue). Latin Media Ventures president Cynthia Lewis said the September issue will probably introduce four or five more high-end fashion ads. Prior to joining Latin Media Ventures, she was the founding publisher of Hearst Magazines' Shop Etc. She also worked as publisher of Harper's Bazaar and Marie Claire.

Are Time4 Media turned Bonnier Corp employees just naïve?

By SDH When two companies with different cultures come together, what you will get is a culture clash. When the company that is buying the company you’re currently working for says that nothing will change, that’s just to stroke you while they close the deal because there is no way a company is going to drop over $200 million to acquire another company and not put their mark on it. One would be naïve to believe otherwise. This seems to be the current situation at Bonnier Corp which bought Time Inc’s Time4 Media group. Editors are quitting left and right because they don’t agree with the direction the new owners want the magazines to go in. The latest to leave the Bonnier nest is longtime editorial director of the Parenting Group Janet Chan due to what some think is her clashing with publisher Greg Schulman who is the middle man put in charge of enforcing the Bonnier doctrine. Chan has since been doing editorial consulting. Come on people. Did you really think that everything would have remained the same when you rolled under your new masters? How naïve of you!! Either roll with it, or roll out. Luckily for people like Janet Chan, she can probably afford to roll out, which she did.

Extreme Makeover: Time Inc Edition

By SDH There is no doubt that changes are needed at Time Warner’s magazine publishing unit Time Inc. This is the division that has gone mostly untouched for sometime now. Under current CEO Ann Moore, the company unloaded its enthusiast titles to Bonnier Corp, launched and folded the well hyped OfficePirates.com, re-launched and folded Life (which is supposed to re-launch again as Getty Images type web destination), killed Business 2.0 and pink slipped dozens of staffers. OK so all this is business as usual in the magazine industry and not attributed to Moore’s management style. We all know It’s no secret that when a company is looking to cut costs they look to layoff staffers first to fluff up the bottom line. But is that all the shuffling we will see at Time Inc? The company is legendary and publishes 125 titles, and has a slew of businesses in fulfillment, content solutions, retail sales and marketing, customer acquisition and the list goes on. We are not sure how these businesses are doing for the company but some serious streamlining needs to take place in these areas in order to establish a more focused objective. CONTINUED... MAKING AN EFFORT The company has been slowly but surely making a push on the digital side. This was one of the reasons why new Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes decided to wait and see what will become of this digital push before making any decisions. Fair enough we guess, but even before Bewkes took over, Time Inc was badly in need of a makeover. The company needs to be refreshed with new ideas, objectives and a new structure to better meet the current challenges that publishing companies face. Time Inc for the most part is still stuck in analog while other companies remake themselves to handle the changing climate. If the suits at parent Time Warner want to see some changes, they need to make the first move. For starters, we think a fresh face at the top would kick things off right. Not to discredit Ann Moore, but a change at the top would signal a new beginning and would be a strong statement. Following a change at the top, the company needs to be spun off so it feeds off of itself, officially weaned off mommy’s tit. By doing this, investors and the Time Warner board will see the true value of the company and will probably get a clear idea of the value of each product the company publishes, online, print and the different businesses which sit underneath it. DECISION TIME Following a spin off, Time Warner should then take a long hard look at all Time Inc’s products and businesses and decide which ones are no longer worth keeping in the stable and look to unload them via an auction to raise cash to invest in the company’s digital business via strategic acquisitions or R&D. From these auctions, the current roster of 125 magazines should be reduced to about 70-90, and businesses should be streamlined where it makes sense. Hopefully with these reductions the company will see savings on paper, printing and of course salaries following an obvious layoff of staffers. These auctions should only include low performing or none core domestic and overseas titles and businesses. A successful sell off and streamlining of businesses will leave the once bloated Time Inc with some cash and a more lean and mean physique to move swiftly and aggressively towards growing its digital business and strengthening already established brands. Earlier we mentioned a change at the top. A TRIMMED STRUCTURE A new Time Inc under a new leader should have a more clear and streamlined structure. For example the magazine groups are currently broken out into 6 areas, Entertainment, Home/Living, Life/Style, Luxury, News/Business & Finance and Sports. Right off the bat both the Entertainment and Sports groups should be merged as one. The Life/Style and Home/Living groups should be merged as one cutting the 6 groups to 4. Such a restructuring would result in instant cost savings. For International, everything needs to fall under the Time Inc brand further pushing the one brand one focus objective. IN JEFF BEWKES’S SHOES Standing in Jeff Bewkes’s shoes the two names that would be at the top of our list would be Reader’s Digest Association (RDA) CEO Mary Berner, and outgoing Ebay CEO Meg Whitman. It’s obvious why we would have Mary Berner’s name on the list but you may be wondering why Meg Whitman? Well Meg Whitman has a strong consumer background and understands their behavior on and off the web. These experiences come from her being CEO of Ebay of course, and her being a top executive in Disney’s consumer products division which we think would come in handy at Time Inc. As far as t Mary Berner, since being named CEO of RDA, Berner has wasted no time putting her stamp on the company. She re-lined the corporate suite with people she knows and trusts and is putting some spark back into the company’s flagship publication Reader’s Digest by green lighting a total re-design in print and online under new Editor Peggy Northrop. Any one of these two women would be a good choice to take the reigns at Time Inc. We have no doubt that there are some good male candidates out there but for some reason since Don Logan passed the baton to Moore, we only see another woman after the Moore era ends. CAN’T ANN MOORE DO THE JOB? When someone has been in a company as long as Ann Moore has been at Time Inc, they sometimes are blind to certain things. They are sometimes immune to the fact that changes are needed. In cases like this, a fresh mind is needed because Moore may have hit a glass roof with her ideas which sometimes causes a recycling effect. In today’s magazine industry climate, size doesn’t matter, and it’s the size of Time Inc that is preventing it from reaching its full potential.

Businessweek got game

By SDH Get bored during the afternoons at work, tired of reading about the fall of Bear Stearns, tired of reading about the economy, tired of reading about Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke? Well Businessweek can help you get past it all. Businessweek.com has launched Businessweek Arcade, a compilation of 20 free, independently developed Web-based games which reflect the best in indie game design. Helen Waters, editor for Businessweek.com’s innovation and design channel explains it all: We explore how the gaming landscape is changing. A new generation of game designers that grew up immersed in the medium has come of age and is now working to make its mark, altering what is played and how it is played (and where). We report from the cutting edge where designers, influenced by a wide range of new technologies from the social Web to motion-sensing, are altering the gaming industry's contours, bending and breaking old rules, and transforming a once-solitary activity into a model of rich, social interaction.

Jeff Bewkes is a green CEO + The Wall Street Journal changing one section at a time and more.....

By SDH Jeff Bewkes was already making CEO money before becoming CEO of Time Warner. He made a sexy $19.4 million in 2007 [AP] For those of you who care, Emmis Communications is unloading Country Sampler magazine. Something about it not fitting with the current image or something like that. [FolioMag] Another Murdoch looks to make a mark in the media business. Elisabeth Murdoch’s company, Shine bought Reveille Productions, which produces “Ugly Betty,” and “The Office.” She may have already bought her mark. [NYT] The Wall Street Journal is revamping it’s “Market Place” section and this has some newsroom employees wondering what their roll will be [NYT] Fox Newser Chris Wallace calls out colleagues who he says Took Obama’s comments about race out of context. OK so how long until Wallace is booted? Doesn’t he know that Fox News is dedicated to pushing the republican agenda? [Media Talk]

Porn IPO: Penthouse looks to arouse Wall Street with a piece of the action

"We put the magazine back to its roots, where it used to be, we made it a young man's magazine, slightly edgier pictorially than Playboy" - Marc Bell, CEO Penthouse Media Group BY SDH Penthouse Media Group, the parent company of Penthouse magazine says that it will do an Initial Public Offering (IPO) later on this year to raise $250 million to help pay down debt so they can focus on building up the companies web offerings and merchandise busines in an effort to chip away at leader Playboy. The mag has been losing it's lads to magazines like Maxim, but according to Penthouse Media CEO Marc Bell who we're sure has an endless supply of female friends, the magazine has now been repositioned to hold court.

None Shocker: Glen Giles' killer Jorge Ernesto Villalobos, pleads not guilty

BY SDH The scum bag who killed Hallmark Data Systems executive Glen Giles and is being held on $1 million bail, has pled not guilty to murder charges, which as you all know is the usual plea in these cases. Giles' family should be prepared for the long haul on this one as it can drag on for a year or two before it goes to trial which itself can take months. To cut a long story short, it may be a long time before Glen Giles rests in peace and justice is served, not necessarily in that order. Who was this woman that drove one man to kill another man? Where are you? We want to see if you are even worth all this!

Primedia and it's guides earn some money

BY SDH Primedia, a one time consumer magazine giant which has since slimmed down to Apartment and car guides posted a quarterly profit on the strength of the apartment segment. Is this an indication the more and more people are looking for apartments instead of houses due to the current mortgage crisis? Primedia was the mother ship for dozens of titles which have since been sold off in groups and have since been turned into companies. Primedia's outdoor group was sold to InterMedia Partners which spun the group of outdoor titles like Hunting, Game & Fish, Guns & Ammo and others into a company called InterMedia Outdoors. Primedia's enthusiast media titles like Slam, Motor Trend, Soap Opera Digest and about 67 other titles were sold off to Ron Burkle's Source Interlink Companies. Primedia said the apartments segment, which made up about 80 percent of its advertising revenue in the fourth quarter, would gain in 2008 from improving conditions in the apartment-leasing sector with occupancy rates falling slightly to more normalized levels in some markets. Primedia posts quarterly profit from cont ops [Reuters]

Hearst Magazines to pimp retail chain Sears

BY SDH Hearst Magazines has entered yet another deal this month. Probably the first of its kind, we don't know but the magazine giant has entered a deal with luggy retail chain Sears to help the chain get back on its feet because the only sales they are probably getting are from Midwesterners for who going to Sears, is a planned Saturday event. Hearst Magazines will create a new print and internet promotional campaign which will include ads that you are sure to see in some Hearst titles. Sears will make a "significant digital buy" on Hearst owned web sites like O Magazine, Redbookmag.com, Popular Mechanics and others. Promo booklets produced by Hearst will be distributed in some Sunday editions of Hearst newspapers. So basically Hearst will splatter their print and internet offerings with Sears related verbiage in an effort to ramp up awareness that Sears still exists. Will this work, some think it will others don't. The only thing that is clear is that Hearst will come out the winner whether or not this "Save Sears" campaign sails or sinks.

All hail King Uphoff, Kinda!

BY SDH Our main man (in our heads of course) Tony Uphoff may not have gotten the BIG CEO gig at CMP, because his rulers at United Business Media came up with the brilliant idea to break up the company into four separate businesses. But based on 2007 proforma revenues ($178 million) for TechWeb, formerly CMP’s Business Technology Group, Uphoff has been running the biggest group which now means he will run the biggest of the four. So at the end of the day Uphoff still carries more weight than his 3 counterparts which is not necessarily a good thing. Wonder how many employees each company has? And will each company have its own CFO? Damn it this is so confusing!

Glen Giles’s suspicious murder could be linked back to a secret life

"He'd be the kind of guy who would swat someone (who attacked him) away pretty quick. I just don't understand it, and none of us can get over that part of it. How someone could do something like that is beyond me." - Jim Kuchinsky, CEO of Hallmark Data Systems BY ZOE S. When a single man is murdered near or in his home, more questions will come up that many may want to avoid, other than the who, the what, the when, the why. We are not going to rule out that the suspect who was arrested isn’t a magazine exec who was pissed at Giles. But there are the obvious that raises other questions as well. At 47 Giles was single and lived alone. Was he living a secret life that he kept from family, friends and colleagues? Was he murdered by someone who was part of this secret life, or was this someone he met online, and this was the first meet up gone terribly wrong? Trust, we aren’t trying to dog the fact that a man who was clearly well liked was murdered. But, these are things we are sure ran across the minds of investigators. Giles was a 6-foot-4 former varsity basketball player and looked to have weighed over 200 pounds which is puzzling to people who knew him, wondering how someone was able to get the drop on him. It is due to these facts, that no one should be surprised if the person who committed this sick act of violence is someone he knew and the attack was a total surprise. But we will leave that part for when investigators start to release details about their findings. One of Giles’s final proud moments was giving back to his community by organizing a youth basketball competition.

Hearst Magazines enters popularity contest, Kills some websites to tighten the focus, Featured on last night’s The Apprentice

BY SDH Hearst Magazines digital chief Chuck "Chuck Digital" Cordray is really pushing the company's content out there. Over the past months, deal after deal has been announced. The latest push is with Yahoo Buzz. Yahoo Buzz allows readers to vote on the popularity of online stories. Yahoo then posts the winners on its homepage. Hearst has signed on ten of its titles, including Esquire, Cosmopolitan and Redbook, as Buzz content partners. Chuck is working hard to get those page views growing isn't he! In other Hearst Magazines Digital Media (HMDM) news, the company says it is killing the stand alone websites of 13 titles including Good Housekeeping and Country Living and will roll up their content into one huge frigging portal called Allaboutyou.com. Speaking of Hearst did you see The Apprentice last night? The task was for the teams to create a Dial Soap ad for Redbook.

Nielsen forms new entertainment group and puts former Variety publisher Gerry Byrne in charge

BY SDH As rumors continue to escalate about the possible appointment of Tony Uphoff as CEO of CMP Media, things at his old stomping grounds over at Nielsen are being shuffled around. When Uphoff left his gig as Publisher of The Hollywood Reporter & President of the Film & Performing Arts Group, John Kilcullen was put in charge. Well John Kilcullen is now out and former Variety publisher and media and marketing consultant Gerry Byrne will run the new entertainment group which consists of Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, Back Stage, Kirkus Reviews, The Bookseller, Film Journal International, and the film industry expositions ShoWest, ShowEast, Cinema Expo International and CineAsia Exposition. Previously these brands were housed under two separate groups, Film & Performing Arts and Music & Literary. Clearly Nielsen is trying to cut some costs by throwing all these brands under one group and one leader.

Time Out's web expansion plan

BY SDH Time Out New York is about to expand across more big cities via the web, kinda taking on the same formula as the popular Gothamist.com which has websites targeting major cities here in the US and overseas. Time Out’s Tony Elliot wants to stretch his brand to the following U.S. cities: Los Angeles, Dallas, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle and Miami. He is looking to sell a small piece of his empire in an effort to raise $40-$60 million to get the job done. But will the web only expansion work for the Time Out brand? Sure why not? With the rising cost of ink and paper, this could be Tony Elliot’s way around those expenses. However it sounds like at some point, print editions will be launched. What will help the folks at Time Out decide when the time is right to launch print editions? If the websites end up generating respectable traffic and ad revenue would print versions still be part of the plan? One thing is certain, the new Time Out websites will have company from Gothamist LLC's websites like Laist.com, Miamist.com, Austinist.com, Sfist.com, Bostonist.com, Houstonist.com and others. Wonder how many new bodies Tony Elliot plans to hire?

Is it true? Will CMP Technology honor our choice for CEO?

BY SDH When Steve Weitzner was strategically demoted at CMP