Back on the 90s, trade magazine publisher Primedia got into convergence in a big way. Now, cash-strapped in the 00s, it looks one way to get ready for a new CEO Kelly Conlin is to sell off their assets--Seventeen, New York Magazine, Sprinks.com, Kagan World Media research group have all been sold or are on the auction block. Will Primedia Television assets (Channel One, Films for the Humanities and Science, Gravity Games soon follow? And how about those Primedia Workplace learning consulting groups that measure ROI?
Primedia has built an extremely efficient system of deep vertical magazines for business and consumer--over 120 of them--and says they are also the leading supplier of special interest publications to the moving industry (why not, they own a lot of content?)
Kelly Conlin is an efficient and focused CEO--I worked with a close friend of his for several years--and this has to be the CFO's team trying to tighten the ship up so they can get ready to turn it around.
What will happen to About.com in all this? The company spent $700MM to acquire it in ]2000, the end of the Internet bubble, and is still facing heavy debt.

(See column today in NY Post, and Rafat Ali Paid Content piece)
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