Time Inc. will pay $475M in cash for Times Mirror
Magazines' "stable of niche magazines," including The Skiing
Co.'s Ski, Snowboard Life, Freeze and Skiing, according to
Jason Blevins of the DENVER POST. The Skiing Co. President
& Publisher Andy Clurman said company officials were
"ecstatic" by Time Inc.'s acquisition: "If all of us had a
choice, this was our absolute best-case scenario." He said
that no changes were planned for The Skiing Co.'s structure
or location. Clurman: "Think about (Time Warner's) film
assets, the television assets, their online presence, the
magazine and book publishing. If we can insert skiing
programming into all those ... it will be a real shot in the
arm for the entire ski industry." Clurman also said that
Time Warner's Olympic sponsorship of the 2002 Games "meshes
perfectly with The Skiing Company's plan to harness the
Olympic media hype as fuel to promote snow sports" (DENVER
POST, 10/21). INSIDE.com's Lorne Manly wrote the deal gives
Time Inc. "entree into publishing niches that are alien to
the company's more mass-audience magazines." SI President
Michael Klingensmith, who will oversee the integration of
the Times Mirror titles, said, "One of the reasons we like
this acquisition is it does diversify our portfolio." With
SI publishing its "Golf Plus," it will now "likely attempt
to sell those people subscriptions to Golf. Meanwhile,
Klingensmith did not think Time Inc. overpaid: "We're very
comfortable with the price we paid" (INSIDE.com, 10/20).
