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So far, suitors aren’t exactly lining up for Variety as Anglo-Dutch conglomerate Reed Elsevier tries to unload its last US publication.
Among those rumored to be at least looking at the entertainment trade magazine are Leon Black’s Apollo Management, the private-equity firm that bought “American Idol” producer CKX, and financial-data giant Bloomberg LP, the owner of Bloomberg Businessweek.
A spokesperson for Apollo declined to comment. A Bloomberg spokesman said, “We don’t comment on market speculation.”
Some sources say that both are long shots.
Bloomberg, whose financial terminals are ubiquitous on Wall Street trading desks, would seem to the longest of the long shots. Although the company founded by Mayor Mike Bloomberg picked up money-losing Businessweek from McGraw-Hill in December 2009, it prefers to start its own projects rather than buy headaches from others.
Apollo, on the other hand, has $96 billion under management in far-flung industries and frequently eyes distressed properties. Last year, it held serious talks about buying American Media Inc., publisher of the National Enquirer, Star and Shape, but broke off discussions as the celeb mag market deteriorated.
Variety, which has a paid website, and weekly and daily print publications, is still believed to be modestly profitable, but way down from its peak years. Private-equity buyers would have to make investments before they could flip the property, and that would tend to discourage many PE types, who generally prefer to cut costs and sell for a gain.
Industry sources say the more likely suitor is a wealthy vanity buyer, who has tens of millions to spare and could use Variety as a springboard to land on Hollywood red carpets.
Bronx boy
Bob Kappstatter, a veteran Bronx reporter who was forced into retirement after more than 30 years at the Daily News last November, has been hired as the new editor-in-chief of the Bronx Times/Bronx Times Reporter.
The papers are part of the Community Newspaper Group, which is owned by News Corp., which also owns The Post.
Xana X’d
Despite a modest rise in circulation and several months of work on a redesign that is going to be unveiled in the next few weeks, Crain’s New York Business on Monday bounced Xana Antunes, its editor for the past four years.
Rance Crain, the Florida-based CEO of Crain Communications and the titular editor-in-chief of Crain’s New York Business, was said to be the person who pushed for the change, according to publisher Jill Kaplan.
The publication was a past winner of a general excellence award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.
Kaplan said that the circulation of around 50,000 was “up modestly” in the past year.
Rance Crain did not return a call seeking comment.
Kaplan said the company hoped to name a new editor in the next few days. Glenn Coleman, who had been managing editor under Antunes, was named acting editor.
Antunes became editor at Crain’s New York Business in 2008, succeeding founding editor Greg David, who is now a columnist and teaches at CUNY graduate school of journalism.
Antunes had earlier been the editor of CNNMoney.com and an executive editor at Fortune. From 1999 to 2001, she was the top editor at the New York Post, where she earlier served as deputy editor, business editor and deputy business editor.
She declined to comment because she said she was still working out terms of her severance package.
Voice exit
Village Voice Media continues to draw heat for Backpage.com, its adult online classified ad section, which critics contend is a conduit for porn, prostitution and human sex trafficking.
Earlier this week, the freewheeling folks at Trans High Corp., which owns the pro-marijuana High Times, said even they had had enough and were pulling their ads from Village Voice Media print and online publications.
“While we remain staunch defenders of the First Amendment and free speech in general, we do not in any way condone such activities that have been alleged against Backpage.com,” said Trans High spokesman Rick Cusick.
Village Voice Media includes the New York alternative-based weekly, as well as alternative weeklies in Phoenix, Minneapolis, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The company is headed by CEO James Larkin and Executive Editor Michael Lacey, who started New Times and then changed the name to Village Voice Media when the company took over the New York weekly in 2006.
High Times is the seventh advertiser to pull its ads in recent weeks while calling for the company to shut down Backpage.com, which is reportedly pumping $2 million a month in sorely needed ad revenue into Village Voice Media.
Larkin referred calls to the company’s chief legal counsel, Elizabeth McDougall. She said the company has no intention of shutting down Backpage.com and insisted that recent safeguards actually help law enforcement trap sex criminals who are using the ads for illicit purposes.
“We are not going to shut down Backpage,” said McDougall, despite calls from Auburn Theological Seminary and more than 20 state attorneys general.
“If you shut it down, it will only drive the traffic to underground sites and overseas, making it harder for law enforcement officers to gather evidence and prosecute pimps,” she said.
“All of VVM agrees that human trafficking is heinous and is committed to fighting it,” she continued.
That line of reasoning has angered Isaac Luria, who is an organizing director of Groundswell, a lobbying group trying to put pressure on other advertisers to pull ads.
“The solution is not to add more safeguards, which we know don’t work,” he said. “It’s to shut down Backpage.”
Craigslist shut down its adult-classified section in 2010, when it faced similar pressure, and a huge percentage of its ads migrated to Backpage.
Two investors in Village Voice Media said earlier this month that they were pulling out.
Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, a private-equity fund, said it sold its 16 percent stake in the company back to the Larkin/Lacey ownership. GS had originally put in $30 million, and it was sold back at a substantial loss. A Goldman Sachs spokesman told Reuters that the investor had become “uncomfortable with the direction of the company.”