A day after venerable TV-centric media company CBS acquired CNET for $1.8B, print-centric media empire Conde Nast steps in and acquires Ars Technica for $25M, according to Tech Crunch.
Time Warner bought Weblogs for $25M in 2005, the same price Conde Nast paid for Wired last year.
I don’t know, it’s not a bad deal, Conde Nast makes $25M with the sale of one magazine spread (you know what I mean) and traditional media companies need to bolster digital assets, but I think for a company like Conde Nast (so reliant on print) needs to think more about online video than online text content.
Online video is a brave new world - all incremental - for print. For TV, online video is cannibalistic. These companies need to be more aggressive with online video (where their print-based skills are not necessarily transferable) and move their own assets online; by buying up text-based online publishers they tend to fall short over time.
But, I am biased, of course.
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