A Gay Media Empire to Shove in the Closet
A new kingpin of gay content has just come out to Wall Street: Here Media, which rules queer pay-TV, film, magazines, books, and websites. But has anyone stopped to ask if we need it?
PlanetOut sells print business to gay TV service
Bill Gates's money hasn't been enough to staunch the bleeding at PlanetOut. The San Francisco-based gay-media company is finalizing a deal to sell its magazine and book publishing business to the Here Network, a gay and lesbian video-on-demand service. The company publishes leading gay-interest mags The Advocate and …
Were Gay Mags Just Given Away?
Re. the "sale" of Out and The Advocate: PlanetOut.com sold the mags, along with some other properties, to Regent Releasing for $6 million cash, payable in $1 million increments over the next year. But according to Regent and PlanetOut: "The funds shall be treated as prepaid advertising, to be applied as the marketing…
PlanetOut cofounder digs the knife in deeper
Revenge is always sweet — and no one dishes it out more cuttingly than the gays. Mark Elderkin, the founder of Gay.com — the queer portal that merged with PlanetOut — was, by all appearances, abruptly pushed out of his company last year in a so-called reorganization orchestrated by new CEO Karen Magee. Since then,…
Bill Gates goes gay again
The world's second-richest man just spent $26.2 million on The Gays. PlanetOut, the struggling owners of Gay.com, got an investment from Cascade Investment LLC. As Seattlest notes, that firm is owned by Microsoft's Bill Gates. But it's not the first time Bill has been the backer behind PlanetOut.
