Cygnus Business Media

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Cygnus Business Media
Type	Privately held company
Founded	1966
Headquarters	Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin; Melville, New York; Calverton, Maryland and satellite offices
Key people	Carr Davis and Anthony O’Brien, co-chief executive officers
Industry	Magazine publishing/tradeshows/custom marketing
Products	Trade magazines, exposition management, websites, podcasts, webcasts
Employees	500+
Website	www.cygnusb2b.com

Cygnus Business Media is an American magazine publisher, internet information developer, exposition management provider and custom marketing services company. It was founded in 1966 with the initial acquisition of Photo Trade News, a magazine founded in 1937 which continues to serve the photo trade industry as PTN Magazine.

1 Company
- 1.1 History
2 Divisions
3 Vertical markets
4 Magazines & Publishing Properties
5 Discontinued Magazines
6 Expositions
7 References

[edit] Company

Cygnus Business Media focuses on B2B media offerings, growing through new product launches and acquisitions to its current portfolio of more than 200 business media products. Cygnus properties include business publications, tradeshows, conferences, websites, online products, custom publications, directories, buyer’s guides, advertising card decks and research capabilities.

[edit] History

In 1997, Cygnus (then called PTN Publishing) was acquired for about $100 million by a group lead by Gerry Hogan, former CEO of the Home Shopping Network, and Blair Schmidt-Fellner, who, as a vice president with Turner Broadcasting, launched the SportsSouth Network and World Championship Wrestling. Three years later, Hogan and Schmidt-Fellner sold the company to CommerceConnect Media and ABRY Partners for a reported $275 million. Paul Mackler, President of Commerce Connect, was installed as CEO.

In 2006, a few months after Standard and Poor's warned that levels of financial risk were "very high" at Cygnus, Mackler and Cygnus President Richard Reiff resigned. Carr Davis and Anthony O'Brien replaced Mackler as co-CEOs while ABRY denied reports that Cygnus was up for sale.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]

Subsequently, Cygnus continued its reorganization by laying off vice presidents Bob Stange and Paul Bowers and several veteran publishers. Five "brand directors" were appointed to replace the terminated publishers.^[4]

In September 2007, Cygnus management announced plans to reduce employee salaries by 7.5 percent and cut hours to 37 per week per employee, though deadline pressures remained in place despite the reduced labor and pay scale. According to Folio magazine, "The dramatic cost cutting comes in response to greater-than-expected revenue shortfalls." Folio estimated Cygnus Business Media's net pretax profits for 2006 at about $30 million.^[5]

The company's aforementioned salary cut, as well as repeated layoffs of experienced industry veterans, frequent editorial budget cuts and other situations resulted in a public backlash in the blogging community, as bloggers expressed dismay over the company's actions and employees aired many grievances.^[6]

Downsizing continued in 2008 as Cygnus eliminated its Inside Sales department, a move that also proved controversial with employees. The controversy grew as the company restored the 7.5 percent salary cut to some salaried employees—but not commissioned salespeople and some editors—and called the salary reinstatement a "bonus."^[7]

In May 2008, four of the six full-time staff members for Cygnus' Aircraft Maintenance Technology, including the publishers and editor-in-chief, resigned to start Director of Maintenance magazine, a competing publication. Around the same time, former Cygnus Vice President Paul Bowers launched Airport Improvement, another magazine that competes with Cygnus' aviation titles.^[8]

Shortly thereafter, Cygnus Human Resources Vice President Judy Heidebrecht issued a memo to Cygnus employees stating that they could wear "nice jeans" on Tuesdays to see if it would make them "more productive." As reported on Foliomag.com, this resulted in a further employee backlash against Cygnus, and criticism of Heidebrecht in particular, as many considered the memo to be indicative of a disconnect between the problems widely publicized at Cygnus and upper management's perception of those problems.^[9]

[edit] Divisions

Cygnus serves business owners, executives and professionals through four divisions that provide industry and product news, educational materials and advertising and marketing programs:

Cygnus Publishing serves more than 3 million readers each year.

Cygnus Interactive websites provide industry news, editorial content, educational webcasts and podcasts, continuing professional education options, online catalogs, email, online auctions and other services.

Cygnus Expositions manages 50 business-to-business trade shows and conferences.

Cygnus Custom Marketing specializes in marketing plans and sponsored publications.

[edit] Vertical markets

Cygnus Business Media serves major industry and professional markets with 80 trade magazines, online portals, directories and card decks, 15 custom marketing publications, 68 web sites and 50 trade shows and expositions.