Townsquare Media is buying XXL, the 17-year old urban hip-hop magazine from Harris Publications, and will immediately stop producing a regular print edition, The Post has learned.
The October-November issue of the six-times-a-year title, now at the printer, will be the final edition, sources said. After that, XXL will be digital-only.
Two additional digital properties also are being acquired: Antenna Magazine, a young men’s title and one-time print edition that launched as a digital men’s pop culture site in July; and King-mag.com, a suspended entity that will have a digital relaunch.
Terms of the deal could not be learned.
“We incubated something digitally, but the Townsquare people can take it to the next level with their digital expertise,” said Ben Harris, president of Harris Publications, which started XXL in 1997 to rival Vibe.
Unlike in most brand acquisitions during which staff members are laid off, Bill Wilson, the chief content officer of Townsquare, said 11 XXL editorial and digital ad sales team employees will be offered jobs.
Townsquare, which raised about $100 million in an initial public offering on July 23, derives the bulk of its income from 331 radio stations in 66 small to mid-sized markets. It also has a growing digital presence in music genres.
Wilson is the former president of AOL Music and last year acquired some of the former AOL music niche sites, including The Boombox (hip hop), The Boot (country) and Noisecreep ( heavy metal), as well as Comics Alliance.
The Greenwich, Conn., company also runs live events, including Taste of Country and several music festivals on Hunter Mountain in New York’s Hudson River Valley.
Townsquare network ranked No. 50 in terms of traffic across all devices with 49.4 million unique monthly visitors in August, according to comScore, the industry data tracker.
“We think XXL has strong potential in both the digital and live events market,” said Wilson, who said the title could make sporadic, special issue print appearances.
Townsquare grew from the old radio networks, Regents Broadcasting and Gap Broadcasting.
The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange at $11 a share and was trading early Monday afternoon at $11.61, up 1.5 percent.
The news comes only weeks after Vibe’s parent SpinMedia said it was ending that hip-hop mag’s print edition. When SpinMedia bought Vibe Media last year it said it would keep the print edition alive as a quarterly.
Both titles had strong single-copy sales for years, but more recently their predominantly young, male audience has moved to digital consumption.
In May, Source Interlink, a big magazine wholesaler, declared bankruptcy and retreated from the marketplace, hurting newsstand sales for many titles.
“I don’t think it is a cost-cutting thing,” Harris said. “I think it is an opportunity for Townsquare to do more with [the franchise].”