PlanetOut struggles to stay alive?
PlanetOut, the former owner of The Advocate and Out magazines, among others, has seen some bad news in the past few weeks.
At the end of July, the company posted an accumulated loss of $99.8 million. Whew — almost $100 million lost since their creation in 2000.
Today, a press release landed in my inbox announcing PlanetOut’s possible boot from Nasdaq. If they don’t bring up their minimum market value to $5,000,000 of publicly held shares or more in 90 days, they’ll be de-listed from the market.
PlanetOut, which currently owns websites gay.com and planetout.com, posted a $10.4 million loss in its most recent quarterly filing. Their only revenue was at about $5 million.
Back in January, I complained about the gay media’s tendency to put all our eggs in one basket. Later, happily, PlanetOut saw fit to get rid of The Advocate, Out and their other magazines. Fortunately, for the time being at least, our major, national gay media and news-magazines are safe.
It’s starting to look like PlanetOut and its web brands won’t make it through this little recession of ours. That’s my prediction, as sad as that might be.
Huge media conglomerates just don’t work. At least not for us and our community. The only exception might be Window Media (owner of The Washington Blade and Southern Voice, just to name a couple). Although with that company, like many other news companies these days, I’ve heard (only through the totally unreliable and not even close to credible, traditional, Southern grapevine, of course) that things are a bit tight.
Just as I lamented over what seemed like an impending doom for The Advocate and Out, I’d lament for any hint at a loss for Window Media’s various publications, too. Any subtraction from our already small market share on the great big media world would be detrimental for our community and its influence. Papers like The Blade and SoVo are important, as are smaller pubs like Q-Notes. Take any of us away and a big glaring hole will likely remain, at least for a time, unfilled.
Next week I’ll be heading off to Washington, D.C. for the annual conference of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. My newbie journo blood is aching for some quick lessons and introductions. Maybe I’ll come back with a better perspective on the “state of the gay media.” Here’s to hoping it’ll be a good one.
About the Author: Matt
4 Responses to “PlanetOut struggles to stay alive?”
I hope they don’t fall under!
The main site that competes with gay.com these days (for paid memberships, at least) is Manhunt. And their owners donate huge sums of money to Republicans. I’d certainly hate to see them benefit from planetout/gay.com going out of business.
By Robert on Aug 14, 2008
There are always sites that will compete. That have fresh and new ideas. That try to make the community better. This is the core of the problem. Greed! These sites have obligations to the gay community that they become rich off of. It is time that they start doing updates. Not just little updates like gay.com is trying to pawn off at the moment. All of those updates just help themselves - nobody else.
I am owner of guyquestlive.com and I for one can tell you that there are people out there that are trying to make a difference. It starts with making features that open the community up - not close it off from the rest of the world and its technologies. The only sites that will work in the future are ones that have totally new ideas and work with the community - not just with their own pocketbooks. These sites have brought these problems upon themselves because of greed
By Mike Hill on Sep 23, 2008