What future for The Beast?
Posted by Andrew Grant-Adamson on October 27th, 2008
There are a lot of suggestions around that that the business models of traditional print media hinder their launch into online products. So with the internet business IAC behind it, Tina Brown’s The Daily Beast should look a lot more promising than many.
IAC has a string of internet sites including Exite, Smiley Central, Vimeo and dictionary.com, so they should know what they are doing.
But Peter Preston in the Observer yesterday had his doubts. The launch costs are a reported $18 million. He asks: “Can online possibly sustain an investment like that? Ah! hello again, lone blogger… at least you are cheap.”
The Daily Beast is going to have to keep on spending, as well as financing the launch costs, if it is to challenge the Huffington Post.
Perhaps IAC has deep pockets. Revenue in the second quarter of this year was nearly $1.6bn on which it made an operating loss of nearly $400m.
Perhaps Tina should not get too dependent on “some of the best cupcake bakeries in town” in IAC’s “really cool building”.
The makings of a successful media beast? Up to a point, Lord Copper.
October 28th, 2008 at 1:22 pm