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Primedia scoops Cowles
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January 9, 1998: 1:55 p.m. ET
Publisher to acquire two magazine and book divisions in $200M deal
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Primedia Inc. Friday reached an agreement to acquire two publishing divisions of Cowles Media Co. from McClatchey Newspapers Inc. in a deal valued at about $200 million.
Primedia's acquisition of Cowles Enthusiast Media and Cowles Business media is subject to the completion of a previously announced $1.4 billion buyout of Cowles Media Co. by McClatchey, slated for closure by March 31.
Presuming the deal goes through, it would reinforce Primedia's position as a leading publisher of special-interest consumer magazines, analysts say.
Taken together, Cowles Business Media, a specialized publisher of business magazines, and Cowles Enthusiast Media, with its consumer-oriented magazines and book publications, will bring 36 new titles and 15 trade shows to Primedia. The additions would lend Primedia significantly more publishing punch, boosting its total titles to 168 titles and 29 trade shows.
Among the target-market Cowles titles to be added to the Primedia line are staple publications including Fly Fisherman, Vegetarian Times, Civil War Times, American Demographics, Folio:, and Cable World.
McClatchey officials said they planned to use proceeds from the anticipated Primedia sale to repay debts from the Cowles transactions.
In a statement, Gary Pruitt, McClatchey's president and chief executive officer, said the newspaper group had been seeking a buyer for its non-newspaper assets in order to focus on the Star Tribune, Cowles' flagship broadsheet serving the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
William F. Reilly, Pruitt's counterpart at Primedia, said the Cowles Enthusiast Media Division would become a free-standing division of Primedia's Specialty magazines group. Cowles Business Media, meanwhile, would become a unit of Intertec, Primedia's trade and technical group.
Primedia, with sales of $1.4 billion in its last reporting period, publishes, among other titles, Seventeen, Soap Opera Weekly, and Modern Bride. McClatchey Newspapers reported revenues of $624 million in 1996 generated by a large family of anchor newspapers that includes The Sacramento Bee, The News and Observer and The Anchorage Daily News.
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