Join us Dec. 1-3 in New Orleans for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit
There’s a struggle going on in Hollywood right now between old and new media. Variety, the 107-year-old trade magazine, is not only having trouble finding a suitor, but has also come to the conclusion that its $40 million price tag may be too much.
The problem, like many traditional publishers trying to keep its heads above water, is that there are now many online-only trade publications, like Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood, HollywoodLife.com and to a certain extent TMZ, who offer the same (and sometimes more exclusive) content that doesn’t reside behind a paywall. It’s the same story that’s playing out across industries. It’s hard to imagine that if you were to reinvent Variety today that you’d start with a print product.
Digital properties are more nimble than a weekly and trade publications are not immune to the changes in the media landscape. If Reed Elsevier wants to sell Variety, it needs to prove why a legacy media company can work in a digital world. And as the Post points out, dropping the price may be the only way out.
More in Media
AP makes its archive AI-ready to tap the enterprise RAG boom
It’s a strategy that should secure its future as an information data repository for the AI era, and widen its customer base to include more enterprise clients by meeting their AI needs,
Inside Reuters’ agentic AI video experiment
Reuters is experimenting with using an AI agent to speed up its video production process, and hired its first AI TV producer.
Shopify just became the biggest company to launch a Substack newsletter
Shopify is the first company of its kind — an e-commerce platform — to take the plunge into Substack.