November 12, 2005 | The Biz

The big, gay media company

PlanetOut Inc., which operates Gay.com and PlanetOut.com, announced this week that it will acquire The Advocate and Out magazine publisher LPI Media for $31 million.

The deal will make PlanetOut the largest gay online and print media company in the world. Its  two websites receive over 5.4 million visitors per month largely due to their highly successful online personals. LPI's news and entertainment focused Advocate, founded way back in 1967, has a biweekly circulation of 120,000. The lifestyle oriented Out has a monthly circulation of 130,000.

PlanetOut's acquisition of LPI is the latest chapter in a series of mergers in the gay media business over the past several years.  Gay.com and PlanetOut.com were once competitors, but merged in 2000. LPI bought out Alyson Publications, the largest LGBT book publisher in the U.S. a few years ago and has an agreement with LOGO, MTV's new gay channel, to create LGBT programming. Now all of these entities will be controlled (or in the case of LOGO, strongly influenced) by a single company.

The merger mania reflects the reality of the larger media marketplace. The mainstream media long ago learned the value of catering to the gay and lesbian demographic, sought after for its higher than average disposable income. Consequently, gay media companies have to compete directly with the mainstream media for advertising dollars. Given the extremely competitive environment, the mergers were almost inevitable, and certainly not surprising.

And what does all this have to do with gay porn? PlanetOut does not mention in its press release that, as part and parcel of the merger, the company will also acquire Specialty Publications (Unzipped, Men, Freshmen and [2] magazines) which was spun off from LPI several years ago. Given Gay.com's recent foray into adult content with its After Dark porn section and its dependence on online personals, there is great potential for cross-promotion with its new adult print properties.  

Some may believe that there is an inherent danger in concentrating ownership of  gay media. This may have been a legitimate concern 10 years ago but with the advent of the Web - and particularly the blog explosion of the past two years - anyone with an opinion that differs from the editorial stance of The Big Gay Media Company has ample opportunity to share it.

• Gay media titans to wed [SF Gate]
• PlanetOut merger creates gay media giant [Houston Voice]