Sign of The Times: Stereophile’s Parent Company Declares Bankruptcy
- BLOG
- by Jonathan Valin
- Apr 29, 2009
According to Bloomberg.com (see http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aDmRedq9AdQo&refer=us), Source Interlink–the parent company of 5.0 Mustang & Super Fords, Lowrider, Street Chopper, Soap Opera Digest, and Stereophile (among others)–“sought bankruptcy protection as it moves to become a private company.” Bloomberg says that Interlink “hasn’t reported a profit since the second quarter of 2007…Under an agreement with lenders, about $1 billion of existing debt will be canceled and about $100 million additional liquidity will be provided, Source Interlink said. The company said a lender-approved plan of reorganization will be filed.
What, if anything, this means for the future of Stereophile is unclear. In response to a question on the Web site “Audio Asylum” (see http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/critics/messages/4/42778.html) about whether the bankruptcy might impact the mag, editor John Atkinson said; “No. It is business as usual and perhaps better than usual as with the parent company’s debt burden significantly reduced, there may well now be increased investment in its properties, like Stereophile.
Home Theater Review.com reports (see http://www.hometheaterreview.com/av-news/parent_company_of_stereophile_home_theater_mag_files_chapter_11003672.php) that “according the New York Post, [Citibank] will own upwards of 80 percent of the company’s stock which is priced at about 15 cents per share on Tuesday morning.” It also speculates that “while its doubtful that Stereophile and Home Theater will just go away, some of the associated costs, additional web sites and many of the writers on staff could become victim of today’s brutal economy.
From bitter experience at Fi, I know that financial woes are particularly difficult for low-liquidity enterprises like magazines to weather. I guess we will see what we will see. But that times are hard for every part of this industry–and likely to get harder before they get better–is today plainer than ever.
By Jonathan Valin
I’ve been a creative writer for most of life. Throughout the 80s and 90s, I wrote eleven novels and many stories—some of which were nominated for (and won) prizes, one of which was made into a not-very-good movie by Paramount, and all of which are still available hardbound and via download on Amazon. At the same time I taught creative writing at a couple of universities and worked brief stints in Hollywood. It looked as if teaching and writing more novels, stories, reviews, and scripts was going to be my life. Then HP called me up out of the blue, and everything changed. I’ve told this story several times, but it’s worth repeating because the second half of my life hinged on it. I’d been an audiophile since I was in my mid-teens, and did all the things a young audiophile did back then, buying what I could afford (mainly on the used market), hanging with audiophile friends almost exclusively, and poring over J. Gordon Holt’s Stereophile and Harry Pearson’s Absolute Sound. Come the early 90s, I took a year and a half off from writing my next novel and, music lover that I was, researched and wrote a book (now out of print) about my favorite classical records on the RCA label. Somehow Harry found out about that book (The RCA Bible), got my phone number (which was unlisted, so to this day I don’t know how he unearthed it), and called. Since I’d been reading him since I was a kid, I was shocked. “I feel like I’m talking to God,” I told him. “No,” said he, in that deep rumbling voice of his, “God is talking to you.” I laughed, of course. But in a way it worked out to be true, since from almost that moment forward I’ve devoted my life to writing about audio and music—first for Harry at TAS, then for Fi (the magazine I founded alongside Wayne Garcia), and in the new millennium at TAS again, when HP hired me back after Fi folded. It’s been an odd and, for the most part, serendipitous career, in which things have simply come my way, like Harry’s phone call, without me planning for them. For better and worse I’ve just gone with them on instinct and my talent to spin words, which is as close to being musical as I come.
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