Hand (Off) Job…
There is, as they say, a new king in town. With Planet Out’s stock market destruction, LPI now belongs to Regent Releasing, the owner of queer cable network here!. We hope the homo-journo minions over at Out and The Advocate will adapt well to life under their new official rulers. Godspeed gay media folk! [ET]
PlanetOut, Inc. announced today that their stock may be delisted by NASDAQ because the value has fallen too low.
Sell it, if your a lucky. Once it is delisted, it is worth nothing. It’s not traded anymore.
Regent is a tough, savvy little company in a tough, savvy Industry. They are spending someone else’s money in a foul economy, and on a share of a market segment that is in deep, deep trouble. Regent has some very good people, and some very not so good people. Now they definitely have more of both classes. But for all the questions that we gays may ask ourselves and one another about the future of our media nameplates, the game will be played by other (mostly straight) people’s rules. The winners (or should I say conglomerators) will likely be the bigger players. An hour of Bravo beats a day of Here! TV anytime. And Bravo is free.
The end is nigh. ;-(
We like to do alot of padding for the LGBT cause to make us seem larger and a force in the financial world. I think gay cruises are still making money, but when it gets down to dollars and cents, getting advertising and making a profit in paper/print magazines, shit happens.
It depends on how you define the LGBT cause — if our “cause” is opportunist assholes wanting only to make money off us, indeed their shit certainly happens. If you mean what we individually and actually and truly care about, like those we love and those we’ve lost, the horse-hung among Homo’s are alive and well. And the media whores can go to hell, right atop their Charley horses.
Gay media has failed. Logo is another example. They have been around for 3 years and are tanking. Rumors are circulating that MTVN will close them down soon.
Considering Logo’s market research shows that the target demographic for Logo and here! is quite simply not looking for the product that the networks are programming, this purchase must have something else that Regent is trying to do. This is not a money making purchase.
I think you are right about that. But if it is a money losing purchase, that could get rough. Magazines are an expensive business to run, and the returns right now are not even covering operating costs.
It’s no surprise that LOGO may be closed. BRAVO has the market. Their programming appeals to both the gay and mainstream community (advertisers simply require that). As for PlanetOut, the entire mid to senior management team can be blamed for their complete failure at integrating web, events and print. Folks if you don’t get it, simply copy Time Warner or Hearst. What kills me is the investment banks that actually gave these morons money. They have nobody to blame but themselves. But the really sad part is that nobody at PlanetOut could figure out how to relate to the gay community as a whole. Think about it. They targeted only a segment. $100 million and they still couldn’t figure it out. Sad.