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Monday, May 18th 1998 Media Cynic | Forum | Advertising | Classifieds | Jobs Viacom to Sell Educational and Reference Publishing Business to Pearson Viacom Inc. announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to sell its educational, professional and reference publishing businesses to Pearson Plc., for $4.6 billion. Viacom will retain its consumer operations, including the Simon & Schuster name. Net after-tax cash proceeds from the transaction, which are estimated to be approximately $3.8 billion, will be used to repay debt. In a separate transaction, Pearson has agreed to sell the professional and reference publishing businesses to Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst Incorporated for $1 billion. Sumner M. Redstone, Chairman of the Board of Viacom Inc., said, "The highly successful sale of our educational, professional and reference publishing operations enables us to convert the extraordinary value of these businesses into a tangible benefit for our shareholders. This is an extremely significant step in our strategic goal to become an entertainment-driven enterprise with a strong balance sheet and significant free cash flow. We are particularly delighted to be selling our industry-leading educational operations to Pearson, an international media group with a long-standing commitment to education. Pearson understands the value of these businesses, and we are confident that they will continue to grow and develop the assets to their full potential." Viacom's educational, professional and reference publishing businesses, which are part of Viacom's Simon & Schuster unit, comprise the world's largest educational and computer book publishers. Simon & Schuster also is the leading provider of technology-based instructional curriculum, and encompasses major operations in reference and business and professional publishing. The operations have combined annual sales of approximately $2 billion. The businesses include operations in 43 countries and leading elementary, high school and higher education imprints such as Allyn & Bacon, Prentice Hall, Silver Burdett Ginn, Globe Fearon and Modern Curriculum; pioneer technology-based learning companies such as Computer Curriculum Corporation, Educational Management Group and Invest Learning; major names in reference and business and professional publishing, including Macmillan, Que, Bureau of Business Practice, Jossey-Bass, Prentice Hall Direct, New York Institute of Finance and Appleton & Lange; and international publishing operations, including Simon & Schuster Asia, Simon & Schuster Latin America, Simon & Schuster Australia and Simon & Schuster Europe. Big Entertainment Joins with Ellery Queen's and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazines in Internet Venture Big Entertainment, Inc. announced that Mystery Scene, its news magazine of the international mystery fiction community, will join Ellery Queen's and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazines to launch an Internet website called mysterypages.com. The website will sell subscriptions to all three magazines, and plans to offer mystery books for sale on-line in conjunction with an Internet book retailer. The website will contain material from current issues of all three magazines plus interviews with mystery and suspense authors. Other material will include book and film reviews, lists of forthcoming books, and message boards. Mystery Scene has been published for sixteen years and has done cover stories on authors such as Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Mary Higgins Clark. Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock have been leaders in the field of short crime fiction for many decades. Journal Register Company to Acquire the Goodson Newspaper Group's Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio Newspapers Journal Register Company President Robert M. Jelenic announced that Journal Register Company has reached an agreement to acquire the Goodson Newspaper Group's Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio newspapers for $300 million in cash. The acquisition includes five daily newspapers with 123,693 paid daily circulation and 107,686 paid Sunday circulation, and 20 non-daily publications with combined distribution of approximately 360,000. "We are extremely pleased to announce that the Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio Goodson newspapers and their talented staffs will join Journal Register Company," said Jelenic. "We have long felt that these high quality, award-winning newspapers would be a superb addition to and an excellent fit with our current clusters, especially our suburban Philadelphia area cluster, where after the transaction is completed we will have combined daily circulation of more than 197,000 and non-daily distribution of more than 600,000. There are also considerable synergies with our New York and Ohio clusters. This purchase underscores our commitment to strengthening and expanding our existing clusters through strategic acquisitions." Journal Register Company is a leading U.S. newspaper publishing company that currently owns 19 daily newspapers, including the New Haven Register, Connecticut's second largest daily and Sunday newspaper with 100,082 daily and 111,576 Sunday circulation, and 155 non-daily publications in nine states. Journal Register Company currently has total paid daily circulation of approximately 534,000 and non-daily distribution of approximately 3.1 million. The Company's operations are clustered in six geographic areas: Connecticut, Ohio, Philadelphia and its surrounding areas, the greater St. Louis area, central New England, and the Capital-Saratoga, NY Region. Petersen Publishing to Acquire Stereophile Magazine James Dunning Jr., Chairman and CEO of The Petersen Companies, Inc., announced an agreement to acquire Stereophile Magazine and Stereophile Guide to Home Theatre -- two leading high-end audio and home theatre publications, as well as HI-FI '98, The Home Theatre & Specialty Audio Show. Stereophile magazine, published monthly, was founded in 1982 and is the country's largest circulation magazine reviewing high-end audio components. The Stereophile Guide to Home Theatre was founded in 1994 and is published 10 times per year. It delivers information and advice about the high-performance video and multi-channel audio technologies of today and tomorrow. HI-FI '98, a consumer show devoted to high-end audio and home theatre, will take place from June 12-14, 1998 at the Westin Los Angeles Airport Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Live Cannes Film Festival Coverage Begins Internet pioneer Mayra Langdon Riesman leads an 8-member team of reporters for reviews, gossip and Cannes news, much of it Webcast live from the 1998 "Film Scouts on the Riviera" website. This year, Film Scouts plans to deliver the Web's most comprehensive coverage of the films, gossip and inside scene of Cannes, which runs this year from May 13 to 24. "Cannes offers the perfect venue for webcasting," says Riesman, Film Scouts' creator, producer, and director. "There's so much going on, traditional media can't begin to cover it all. The Web lets us provide coverage so complete and immediate, anyone anywhere in the world can feel they are part of the action, seeing the films and overhearing all the hot gossip. And because it is an interactive medium, the audience can really come to feel involved in this glamorous event. Last year we even had users "produce" their own Cannes film right on the Net." At the center of Riesman's webcast will be professionally produced multimedia film clips that afford an intimate view of the celebrities and the scene surrounding them. Films Scouts serves these up with audio clips, still pictures, reviews, celebrity interviews, features, restaurant reviews, language instruction, and up-to-the-minute coverage of all the important movies, deals, and parties. For those with a need to participate, Film Scouts provides games, chats, quizzes, and other special features. Seinfeld Withdrawal Support Online A Seinfeld fan website is inviting fans to "Chat About Nothing" Thursday nights beginning May 21 at 8:00 PM Eastern. Thursday nights will never be quite the same, but grieving Seinfeld fans can always turn to the Internet, where the show will go on forever -- and die-hard fans will even have an online support group they can turn to for help filling those empty Thursday evening hours. Krista Beck-Gallagher, creator of the Seinfeld Fans site at The Mining Co. Internet Guide network, will be hosting "Seinfeld Fans Anonymous" support chats on Thursday nights at http://seinfeld.miningco.com/mpchat.htm beginning May 21, from 8:00 PM to 12:30 AM Eastern Time. Fans around the world are invited to log on and "chat about nothing," according to Beck-Gallagher, who runs the website from her home in Spokane, Washington. 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