So Bloomberg has picked up BusinessWeek for between $2-5 million. It’s a significant deal because as BusinessWeek’s Tom Lowry reports, the deal is unprecedented for both buyer and seller. It’s the first major acquisition for Bloomberg and signals its shift into the consumer focused media.
So what are Bloomberg’s plans for BusinessWeek? They are pretty radical and extensive, according to this report in Advertising Age.
It plans to increase the number of editorial pages, even bringing in some of Bloomberg’s 2200 reporters. All this at a time when when other news organizations are cutting costs by reducing news pages.
Bloomberg president Daniel L. Doctoroff, has also talked about turning the online presence of the combined entity into a massive force. “The other opportunity exists online, where between the two sites, Bloomberg.com and BusinessWeek.com, we’ll have roughly 8 million unique [visitors], which are more than any other non-portal business and financial site,” Mr. Doctoroff said. “Interestingly they have virtually no overlap in terms of advertisers and relatively little overlap in terms of viewers. That is a big opportunity.”
In an age when media proprietors are cutting staff and quality of service, this is just extraordinary. And it might just work. If it does, it will give ammunition to those who claim that the death of print media has been greatly exaggerated.
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