Advanstar + Primedia’s PMG?

According to an April 9 report in the New York Post by vaunted media reporter Keith Kelly, the bidders for Primedia’s Performance Media Group (the remainder of the enthusiast titles and the bulk of Primedia’s revenues/profits—over 60%) have been whittled down to two: Veronis Suhler Stevenson, media investment bank/private equity shop/mezzanine partners (and parent to the min family), and Curtco Media, publisher of the Robb Report and other luxury lifestyle rags.

Interesting to me is the far-fetched but titillating possibility of VSS building a mega company from smashing together PMG with Advanstar, a huge B2B publisher/tradeshow producer that VSS just bought in a $1.142 billion acquisition.

Aside from both being massive publishing/media companies, PMG and Advanstar have some titles in common: Advanstar’s power sports group and PMG’s automotive group.

Power Sports Group (highlights): Motor Age, Aftermarket Business, Dealernews (see this week’s issue of min’s b2b for numbers and an analysis on some of these books). The group is also comprised of five other magazines, numerous cyclical supplements, 16 consumer events, 3 tradeshows, 14 Web sites, and 42 training manuals.

PMG (highlights): Automobile, Automotive.com, Motor Trend. The group also consists of three other consumer books and an astounding 51, highly targeted enthusiast titles, including the colorfully named Mopar Muscle and Hot Bike (the “51” includes internationally targeted magazines).

One salivates at the leveraged selling opportunities available through Advanstar’s heavy, horizontal books and PMG’s extreme vertical niches. This doesn’t even take into account Advanstar’s impressive tradeshow machine.

Curiosity led me to call Tom Kemp, managing director at VSS, and had this to say when asked about the possibility of “Primanstar”:

“The short answer is no, but I can see how you could wonder about that, because certainly the power sports group at Advanstar is a combination of trade and consumer magazines and events serving the automotive and motorcycle markets. But looking at it just from a private equity investor standpoint, these are really separate business. Advanstar is a large transaction. Primedia would be another large transaction. It would be too complicated.”

Kemp added that it would be difficult to “get your hands around from a partnership standpoint” and “there would be huge questions about tax issues.”

95% of me says: Well, so much for that idea.

5% of me says: You heard it here first!