Meredith Co. Buying Time for $2.8 Billion

Time Inc., the US magazine publisher is going to be sold to Meredith Co. backed by Koch brothers for $2.8 billion dollar.

Billionaire brothers, Charles and David Koch who are known for supporting economically conservative causes are backing the deal.

Meredith is an Iowa-based publisher and broadcaster which has made two previous unsuccessful bids for Time, according to The New York Times.

Meredith Corporation is the owner of ‘Family Circle’, ‘Better Homes’ and Gardens’ and ‘AllRecipes’. The corporation has agreed to purchase Time Inc. in an all-cash transaction. The deal was made possible, in part, by an infusion of $650 million from the private equity arm of Koch Brothers.

Time has struggled with declining advertising revenues since it was spun off from Time Warner in 2014.

In addition to Time, the company also publishes ‘People’, ‘Sports Illustrated’, ‘Entertainment Weekly’ and ‘Fortune’ magazines.

In November, Time’s third quarter revenue slipped 9.5% to $679m, marking the sixth straight quarter the publisher fell short of analysts’ expectations.

According to New York Times, “a long chapter in media history came to an unlikely close on Sunday night with a sale agreement for Time Inc., the publisher of once-prestigious magazine titles including Time, Sports Illustrated and People.”

Time Inc. is New York to its core. The company was founded by Henry R. Luce and Briton Hadden, who had worked together in their college days at the Yale Daily News. Together they hatched the idea of a fast-paced weekly that would capture an increasingly hectic and urbanized world.

After the successful start of the business magazine Fortune in 1930, Luce added Life magazine to Time Inc.’s growing stable and transformed it into a wide-ranging general interest magazine that made use of glorious photography to capture movie stars, world leaders and exotic, far-flung places.

In the middle of the 20th century, Time Inc. even had its own film arm, with ‘The March of Time’ series of news shorts that played in movie theaters before the main feature.