Penske Media Corporation

Penske Media Corporation
Industry Digital media
Predecessor Mail.com Media Corporation
Key people
 Jay Penske (CEO)
Website http://www.pmc.com/

Penske Media Corporation (PMC) is a leading digital media, publishing, and information services company founded in 2003. PMC engages with thriving audiences across the web, television, mobile, print and social media – reaching more than 140 million consumers monthly (comScore, 2014), and was recently named one of the Top 100 Private Companies in the United States. With the preeminence of its brands, PMC is one of the largest digital media companies in the world, publishing more than 20 digital brands, including an extensive joint venture in India with ZEEtv, as well as 40 annual events/conferences and a dynamic research and emerging data business. PMC brands include PMC Studios, Deadline.com Variety Magazine, Variety.com, CricketCountry.com, HollywoodLife, ENTV, India.com, Movieline, TVLine, BGR, AwardsLine, @hollywood, LA411, NY411, Young Hollywood Awards, The Style Awards, and Breakthrough of the Year Awards. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, California.

History

In 2003, Jay Penske founded PMC — a business that started as Velocity Services Incorporated ("VSI"), an affinity marketing and Internet services company that later briefly operated as Interactive Digital Publishing Group.[1] The company acquired the mail.com domain, was renamed Mail.com Media Corporation ("MMC"), and re-launched the domain as a new service in 2007.[2] The company then successfully created, built, and sold (Mail.com), which was at the time the 5th largest web portal, to United Internet.

In 2008, the company raised $35 million of venture capital financing from an investor group led by Quadrangle Capital Partners.[3] In 2009 it bought Deadline Hollywood Daily, an entertainment industry insider blog, from its founder Nikki Finke, in a cash and stock earnout transaction valued at $10–15 million.[4][5][6][7]

On April 27, 2010, Mail.com Media Corp. announced it had acquired American technology blog 'Boy Genius Report' via a press release posted on Boy Genius's website.[8] The Boy Genius Report announced its intentions to relocate its website to newly acquired "www.bgr.com", which was launched in May 2010. In November 2010, the company launched TVLine.com, a consumer TV focused website, operated by co-founder and Editor in Chief Michael Ausiello, formerly of Entertainment Weekly, Oncars.com, and purchased 40% of India.com, one of the largest internet providers in Asia and which carries MMC content.

Mail.com was sold to the German company United Internet in 2010, however MMC continues to be an exclusive content provider to United Internet and the Mail.com portal, as well as to India.com, and launched a German-language version of BGR.com in March 2011.

In 2012, MMC was renamed Penske Media Corporation ("PMC").

In October 2012, PMC bought Variety from Reed Elsevier.[9] PMC continues to be the owner of Deadline.com, which since the 2007-08 WGA Strike has been considered Variety's largest competitor in online showbiz news. On October 10, 2012, Jay Penske announced the paywall for Variety would come down, the print version would remain, and that he would invest more in the digital platform of Variety.com.

In August 2014, PMC bought Women's Wear Daily, Footwear News, Beauty Inc, M and the Fairchild Summits from Conde Nast.[10]

References

  1. ↑ Alan Shipnuck (2004-07-14). "Hitting Cleanup". Sports Illustrated.
  2. ↑ Amit Chowdhry (2008-10-22). "Quadrangle Capital, WI Harper Group, and Novel TMT Ventures Delivers $35 Million To Mail.com". Pulse2.
  3. ↑ Don Reisinger (2008-10-21). "Mail.com lands $35 million in funding". cnet.
  4. ↑ Lauren A.E. Schuker (2009-06-24). "Hollywood Web-Site Sale Reflects Growing Clout". Wall Street Journal.
  5. ↑ Matthew Garrahan (2009-06-24). "Finke to sell Hollywood news website". Financial Times.
  6. ↑ Luft, Oliver (2009-06-24). "Deadline Hollywood blog sold for up to $15m". the Guardian (London). Retrieved 2010-05-12.
  7. ↑ Brian Stelter (2009-06-23). "Nikki Finke, Hollywood Blogger, Gets Her Payday". New York Times.
  8. ↑ S. Geller, Jonathan (April 26, 2010). "Taking BGR to the next level — MMC acquires BGR". BGR. Retrieved May 22, 2013.
  9. ↑ "In a Fire Sale, Penske Media Buys Variety". The New York Times. Retrieved October 9, 2012.
  10. ↑ "Condé Nast sells Women's Wear Daily, others to Penske Media". USA Today. Retrieved August 19, 2014.

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