Printers of the world unite! Feeling the squeeze from the likes of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), a group of magazine publishers is forming an industrywide joint venture ... for protection.
Led by Time Inc., a division of Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), participating companies would create a digital storefront for their content. In this way, they could peddle their goods without the hefty carve-outs that come with Amazon and Apple deals.
So far, this new effort doesn't have a name, but the key players are pretty recognizable. Condé Nast and Hearst have spoken with Time about the venture, which is expected to be announced in about a month. The launch is planned for 2010. If all goes as planned, both magazine and newspaper companies would be involved in the project.
The project, according to the Financial Times, would be structured like Hulu, which is a joint venture involving NBC Universal, a division of General Electric (NYSE: GE), News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS), and Disney (NYSE: DIS).
The ultimate purpose of this joint venture is to keep publishers in control of their own content -- a long-running theme in the publishing business. Most of the print companies have been unwilling to part with what they produce, even if they are accepting a much smaller market. The Time-proposed project would reopen the sector thought to be available only to technology-based media companies (like Amazon and Apple) -- without the cost or lack of control.
But there's no guarantee this will work.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-04-2009 @ 11:27AM
Beltway Greg said...
Which will give rise to more internet based news gathering organizations that will partner with Google and Apple and others. This is just further corporate Balkanization that can only result in greater loses. Oh well, at least they'll know where to find one another when the strongest players gobble up the weakest links. My money is on Rupert. It's sort of like Dracula opening his cape and inviting you in because it warm.