I'm just a simple country blogger, but despite recent rumors about Viacom buying out all or part of Ziff Davis Game Group, I just don't see it happening.
There are a number of reasons for this, chief among them is the fact that ZD has tied their print magazines to the deal. In other words, if you don't buy EGM and Games for Windows you can't buy 1Up.
This may seem like a negotiable point, but Ziff Davis isn't stupid and they know that they can't sell the magazines alone, especially in today's anti-print environment, so they are tying it to their very valuable 1Up property.
What that means is that any buyer who wants to cut a deal with Ziff Davis is going to have to do one of three things: Run the magazines, count on flipping them (which is very risky), or buy em up and then shut them down and take the loss on the chin.
So why can't Viacom do this?
Well they could, but they probably won't. They don't have any interest in print so why would they saddle themselves with some magazines? And they have this little issue called shareholders, who aren't going to sit quietly by while their money is sunk into something that is going to be torpedoed immediately or be hopefully sold off eventually.
If someone is going to jump at this deal, and I'm sure someone will, it will be someone in the publishing business already. So the next time you walk by a magazine rack, take a careful look, one of those magazines is about to get a couple of siblings. Brian Crecente
Source: VIACOM: Editorial: Why MTV Won't Buy 1Up
Originally published on Thu, 11 Jan 2007 23:00:33 GMT
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