The Radio Times is poised to go into foreign ownership, as German publisher Hubert Burda finalises a deal to buy its parent company.
Immediate Media, which struck a £121m deal with BBC Magazines to buy, license or contract publish titles including Top Gear, Top of The Pops and Match of the Day magazines in 2011, could announce the deal before Christmas.
Hubert Burda, which in the UK owns titles including Your Home and HomeStyle, will require final consent from BBC Worldwide, the corporation’s commercial arm, before it can take formal control of the titles. The deal is potentially worth as much as £275m.
Immediate Media, which is owned by UK private equity company Exponent, publishes about 60 magazines and digital brands including 220 Triathlon and You and Your Wedding.
However, the jewel in its crown is Radio Times, which the BBC published from 1923 until the sale in 2011. The TV and radio listings title, which is in the process of developing its digital content operation, still sells 660,000 copies a month in print and generates as much as 60% of Immediate Media’s profits.
The Radio Times circulation reached a peak of nearly 9m in the 1950s and, even 25 years after the deregulation of UK TV listings which resulted in the launch of numerous competitors, it remains the UK’s third most popular paid-for magazine after TV Choice and What’s on TV.
Exponent, the previous owner of media jobs website Gorkana and the Times Educational Supplement, set up Immediate Media to take control of 34 magazines from the BBC in a complex deal in 2011.
The Radio Times was one of 11 titles sold outright by the BBC, along with others including food magazine Olive and Gardens Illustrated.
Eighteen BBC programme-branded titles, such as Gardeners’ World and BBC Wildlife, were licensed to Immediate Media.
A third group of titles, including Top Gear and Good Food, were retained by BBC Worldwide but published by Immediate Media under a contract publishing agreement.
Immediate Media, which is run by chief executive Tom Bureau, was formed by Exponent merging it with other publishers it owned, Magicalia and Origin.
The sale of Immediate Media, which several sources said probably would not go through before the new year, to Hubert Burda was first reported by Sky News.
DC Advisory, which is advising Exponent on the sale, declined to comment. Exponent and Burda could not be reached for comment. BBC Worldwide declined to comment.
