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News, features and resources for media and publishing professionals. Wednesday, April 4, 2001 Blogs | Subscribe | Interviews | Events | Films | Book Blog Media Cynic | Forum | Advertising | Classifieds | Jobs Inside and Brill's Content Merge; Layoffs Result Powerful Media, the publisher of Inside.com, an online resource for media and entertainment professionals, has sold itself to Brill Media Holdings in a deal billed as merger between the two companies. Inside.com, which was widely considered a popular and respected source of media and entertainment journalism, was also considered a failure financially. The New York Post reported that the company spent nearly $18 million last year with earnings of only $1-2 million. However, the company was not given much time to build its revenues. Instead, Powerful Media has chosen to sell out early rather than face the rounds of layoffs, expense reductions and VC capital begging that other dot-coms have endured. Inside.com will become a gateway to Media Central, the huge media portal being amassed by Stephen Brill, the CEO and founder of Brill Media Holdings, in a deal between his company and Primedia. The sites and resources involved in the new media conglomerate include mediacentral.com, Brill's Content, Kagan World Media and Primedia's media-related print magazines including Folio, Cable World, American Demographics, Simba, Circulation Management and some 170 other media publications. Contentville.com, an online content store, is also part of Brill Media Holdings. Primedia owns 49% of Brill Media as a result of the Media Central deal. As part of the merger of the companies and the restructuring of Brill's publications and websites, Inside Magazine (Inside.com's print edition) will merge with Brill's Content to become Inside Content. Inside Magazine and Brill's Content will cease publication and Inside Content will be launched later this year. As many as 50% of the staff from each publication could be laid off as a result of the merger from both Inside and Brill's Content. The actual plans for what will become of Inside.com are still unknown, but rumor has it that the site will provide much less free content than the site did at its peak. Some media outlets have reported that only the headlines will remain free. Also, most of the content will be part of a fee-based subscription model and a majority of the content will come from the already existing publications and resources that will be part of the new Media Central company. Evidence of the Inside.com and Brill's Content transition is already clear -- MediaCentral.com now re-directs its website traffic to the homepage of Inside.com. Kurt Andersen and Michael Hirschorn, two of the founders of Powerful Media, will remain with the new company as vice chairman. They will report to Stephen Brill. Deanna Brown, also a Powerful Media co-founder, has chosen to exit the new company after a three-month consulting stint. Related Links: · Inside.com · Brill's Content · Primedia Click here to return to the homepage of The Write NewsTM Click here to subscribe to our free weekly email newsletter. www.writenews.com Copyright © 1997-2007 by Writers Write, Inc. All Rights Reserved.