LOS ANGELES—Reed Business Information announced in a blog post Wednesday that it is closing three B2B magazines—including Video Business—and their associated websites. The other two titles are Manufacturing Business Technology and Industrial Distribution.
“VB’s owner, Reed Business Information, is shuttering the magazine and its online operations, effective this week, as part of a larger, ongoing strategy to divest itself of most of its business-to-business publications in the U.S.,” the post read.
According to Folio, the move is not entirely unexpected, especially coming on the heels of a New Year’s Eve memo from RBI CEO John Poulin to staffers alerting them to the need to close certain titles and lay off a number of employees during the first half of 2010.
“The closures come less than six months after Reed said it was putting the majority of the U.S.-based RBI titles back on the block after a failed auction of the entire group ended in late 2008 after bids were said to have fallen from approximately $2 billion to $1 billion,” wrote Jason Fell. “So far, the only divestiture to materialize was the sale last month of Broadcasting & Cable, Multichannel News and This Week in Consumer Electronics (TWICE) to Wicks Group-owned NewBay Media.”
The VB blog post said that readers can continue to “get the latest home entertainment business and technology news at www.variety.com.”
