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From: Sy.WBC3@CU20B.ARPA (Bill Catchings)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: The demise of Ziff-Davis
Message-ID: <9402@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 21-Mar-85 09:43:22 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.9402
Posted: Thu Mar 21 09:43:22 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 23-Mar-85 03:08:17 EST
Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA
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I can't keep silent any longer.  I'll preface my comments by saying
that I do freelance writing for PC Magazine, a Ziff-Davis publication.
Most of the following information comes not from Z-D but from the New
York Times via my slightly cloudy memory.  Z-D is a privately held
company considered by Wall Street to be one of the best managed
magazine publishers.  Z-D magazines were divided into three groups of
about ten to twenty magazines: computers, mass market and specialty
publications.  The mass market magazines are big name magazines such
as Brides and the specialty magazines were targeted at small market
segments such as aviation.  I'm not familiar with any of the specialty
magazines.  As best I can remember the remaining co-founder, either
Mr. Ziff or Mr.  Davis, is getting on in years and decided to break up
the empire.  Since many of the Z-D stable of magazines are the leaders
in their fields and most of them made a good profit Z-D had no trouble
selling them.  The mass market magazines were sold to CBS for about
$300 million and the specialty one to Murdock for about the same
price.  Z-D retained the computer magazines.

This letter is not written to defend Ziff-Davis for the cancelations
of the magazines so dear to some of your hearts.  That is probably
what Wall Street credits them for as "good management".  Rather I just
wanted to say that by no means is Ziff-Davis experiencing any sort of
financial problems.  I will convey your concerns to folks I know in
Z-D to let them know that people are not satisfied with the way these
things were handled.  I personally think that they still do publish
some good computer magazines, but don't feel like debating the issue.

						-Bill Catchings

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