Broadcasting & Cable Magazine and Multichannel News sold to NewBay Media

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Entertainment industry trade magazines Broadcasting & Cable and Multichannel News and technology publication Twice have been sold by Reed Business Information to NewBay Media. A deal will be announced to staff this morning.

NewBay LLC is owned by private equity firm The Wicks Group and produces 40 publications and newsletters. It owns musical magazines including Guitar Player, audio visual magazines including AV Technology and a couple of educational publications.

Founded in 1931 by Sol Taishoff, Broadcasting & Cable Magazine covered the industry primarily from a Washington perspective for decades until relocating much of its editorial operations to Los Angeles and New York. Like many industry magazines, it has seen its advertising pages diminish over the last several years. In its heyday, the magazine had a strong influence with regulators and Capitol Hill insiders. (Disclaimer, I worked at Broadcasting & Cable for several years).

Reed has indicated that it plans to maintain ownership of Daily Variety and Variety. Separately, the Nielsen Co., parent of Hollywood Reporter, Billboard and Media Week is near a deal to sell those publications and several others to investor groups that includes Lachlan Murdoch, son of News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Broadcasting & Cable was once sold for $75 million to Times Mirror in the 1980s and then a unit of Reed acquired it in the early 1990s for less than half that figure.

-- Joe Flint