Time staff faces office move in 2019: source
WHILE
Time magazine is still based in the New York offices of Meredith in lower Manhattan, a reliable source tells Media Ink that staffers at the onetime flagship of the old Time Inc. empire should not get too comfortable.
The new owners plan to move the magazine and digital spinoffs out of there by mid-2019, according to someone close to the situation.
Internet billionaire Marc Benioff and wife Lynne purchased the magazine assets from Meredith for $190 million in a deal that closed last week. Marc Benioff is the founder of Salesforce.com.
The name of the company he formed to make the Time acquisition does not appear to have much staying power as the permanent new moniker of the corporation. It was dubbed: You.com Global LLC.
But don’t look for Time magazine to revive the old parent company’s name — Time Inc. — since Meredith, which acquired Time Inc. in a $2.8 billion deal in January, retains it. The Des Moines-based media company ceased using the name the second the deal closed.
Defying success
Troubled Defy Media, which owns the digital brands Smosh and Clever, said it is shutting down its Beverly Hills, Calif., production office and laying off 80 people by Jan. 2, 2019.
Calls to its New York headquarters were greeted with the recording, “The Google subscriber you are trying to reach is not available.”
The company has been shedding assets and laying off staff, which numbered 400 employees at its peak. Earlier this year, it sold its pop culture site Screen Junkies, which counted 8 million YouTube customers, to Fandom, owned by Wiki Inc. And Defy’s video gaming site Escapist was sold to Enthusiast Gaming.
News of the LA shutdown was first reported by the Web site Tubefilter.
Defy Media has also had legal problems. Prompted by a sexual harassment complaint, the company fired Screen Junkies founder Andy Signore in October 2017 for what the company said at the time was “egregious and intolerable behavior.”
Signore denied the claims of harassment leveled by a former intern and filed a lawsuit in August over “negligent infliction of emotional distress” and claimed that Defy terminated his participation in the partnership without giving him a chance to counter the allegations.
Defy Media CEO Matt Diamond did not return a message via LinkedIn seeking comment on Tuesday’s developments.
Sucking it up
High Times Holding Corp. has tacked on another month in its efforts to raise money via a crowdsourced initial public offering.
The company is trying to raise enough money to gets its shares listed on a public stock exchange. The offer was extended until Nov. 30. Previously, it was set to expire on Oct. 31.
The company is also trying to work out an agreement with Las Vegas-based lender Prime Trust regarding a $2.5 million loan payable to ExWorks Capital that comes due on Nov. 30 — tied to an escrow account that the private equity firm Oreva used to fund the acquisition of High Times last year.
High Times could have raised up to $50 million under the Regulation A+ rules in its public fundraising, but as of now it is far short of that lofty goal. The company in its last public announcement on funds said it raised about $12 million.
So far, the company that publishes pro-cannabis magazines and runs exhibitions and festivals is not traded on a public exchange.
To trade on Nasdaq, it needs to raise a minimum of $14.7 million.
In its latest deal, High Times, headed by CEO Adam Levin, bought the music event Chalice Festival after Gemini Financial Corp. foreclosed on a loan of $587,000 when a festival in the San Bernardino County Center was canceled in July.
The city of Victorville, Calif. voted “no” on a permit for the event, where recreational cannabis was going to be consumed. Organizers filed a suit against the city, which is still pending. High Times paid $560,000 for the rights to resume the festival down the road.
High Times also had to cancel its own California Cannabis Cup in Sacramento last week because of permit questions from that city. High Times said it hopes to hold the Cannabis Cup sometime next year.
The revenue losses have hurt High Times’ bottom line. In 2017, the company lost $24.7 million on revenue of $14.5 million. Its Reg A+ disclosure statement warns that “this investment involves a high degree of risk” and that it is “suitable only for persons who can bear the economic risk for an indefinite period of time and who can afford to lose their entire investment.”