It may take $23 a share to win Time: sources
IT’S
going to take an offer of at least $23 a share to win over the Time Inc. board, media observers were whispering on Thursday in the wake of a report that Meredith Corp. had formally approached the 95-year-old publisher about a deal.
That would work out to a price of about $2.3 billion for the publisher of Time, Sports Illustrated, People and various other titles.
Thereport, fromBloomberg, got investors as excited as teen boys eyeballing an SI swimsuit issue. The shares stiffened, rising more than 10 percent in the wake of the report — before settling at $18.95 at the close, up 2.7 percent.
While Meredith’s interest in Time is indeed real, sources said, there are parts of the New York company Meredith doesn’t want.
Therefore, the source added, a second company is likely in the mix.
What does Meredith like? InStyle, Cooking Light, Real Simple, Sunset and other monthlies, sources said. They’d blend in well with the Des Moines-based company’s Better HomesandGardens, MidwestLiving and Martha Stewart Living.
There is little cornfield interest in Time, Sports Illustrated or Fortune — each with a male-oriented reader base.
Perhaps that’s not a surprise. Those titles wereleft out of the deal in the ultimately unsuccessful merger talks between the two companies back in 2013.
Clearly left behind amid the Meredith chatter are Edgar Bronfman Jr., Len Blavatnik and Ynon Kreiz. The three investors had offered $18 ashare in aletter to the Time Inc. board last November.
That offer was promptly rejected, andthethree are not expected to raise their bid.
None-too-artful
Louise Blouin, known as the Red Queen, has shaken up her top editing ranks again at the financially hard-pressed art house publisher, Louise Blouin Media.
Early this week, DavidGursky, the president of global development and publisher of Art & Auction, was suddenly out the door.
“It was voluntary,” Gursky told Media Ink. But he has no new landing place, and he declined further comment.
Scott Indrisek, the seven-year veteran who was only promoted to editor-in-chief of Modern Painters in September, was let go on Tuesday, also for budgetary reasons, according to ARTnews. Hecouldnotbereached for comment.
Media Ink learned he was not the only top editor to go. KarenQuarles was laid off as the editor-in-chief of Blouin Lifestyle, an upscale luxury magazine that was cut back to quarterly from six times a year and had outsourced most of its work to freelancers.
Quarles could not be reached for comment. Noreplacementshavebeennamed. Many of the contributing editors have not been paid for months, sources tell Media Ink.
Unpaid invoices range from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, sources said. Atsomeofthe publications, staffers began leaving the names of contributing editors off the masthead because it would have been misleading to pretend to have large staffs when many were not getting paid.
Blouin’s Artinfo Web site had already fired mostofits US-based staffers and outsourced the work to India.
Oneinsider said that the workoften used generic bylines to obscure the fact that it wasbeingwritten overseas. For months, insiders said that galleries and event planners would try in vain to contact one particular generic byline to demandacorrection.
Most of the material now onn the site consists of poorly rewritten press releases produced by India-based freelancers.
Blouin, who has yet to return from her overseas Christmas vacation, could not be reached for comment at press time.
Gannett fire alarm
Gannett put some post holiday fear into employees at an unknown number of its papers — workers who had already survived a number of downsizings.
Some unidentified executive erroneously sent employees a chilling note saying the employees would shortly be leaving the company and that they neededtofill out anattached exit interview form.
Among those who received the email, we are told, were some of the employees at the North Jersey Media GroupthatincludesThe(Bergen) Record and other papers — where more than 200 employees were laid off following Gannett’s $40 million takeover last July.
David Harmon, the chief people officer (that is really his title), sent a follow-up e-mail telling employees nnot to panic. “It has come to my attention that some of you may have received an automatedemailfromExitSurvey@Gannett. The email states you ‘will be leaving the company in the near future’ and also has an exit interview attached. Please disregard any emails from ExitSurvey@Gannett and there is no need to respond.”
We’re not sure Harmon’s e-mail cheered up anyone — but it did produce a lot of gallows humor.
“Dry run, just practicing,” quipped onestaffer at the Gannett- ownedDetroit Free Press.
Media blogger Jim Romenesko was the first to post the e-mail from Harmon.