Media Companies Partner for Contentville.com Launch
Posted on February 2, 2000
Brill Media Holdings, L.P. has announced the formation of a partnership that will launch Contentville.com in the second half of this year to sell all varieties of content, including magazines, ebooks, traditional books, transcripts, original works, academic treatises, speeches, and archives of articles from magazines. Consumers will be able to search for material that interests them in a particular subject area and obtain guidance from experts in these subject areas. The experts will recommend magazines, magazine articles, books, and other material, and will also provide candid advice about what not to buy or read.
"The defining concept of Contentville is that everyone involved is passionate about content, whether it's magazines, newspapers, books, e-books, archived magazine articles, academic treatises, or forms of content that are just now being invented," said Brill Media Holdings CEO Steven Brill. "In a world where everything is marketed and hyped, we want to create a place online that is like an old-time magazine stand, bookstore, or library, where everybody there reveres quality work and wants to share it with others. When you come to a place like that, honest, intelligent people take you by the hand and say. 'Here, read this magazine or this new book or this transcript if you're interested in the modern theater, or gardening, or fishing, or European politics." Or 'read this if you care about nutrition.' Or, 'check this out if you love Washington intrigue novels.'"
Contentville's partners, in addition to Brill Media Holdings, who is the managing general partner, include: CBS; NBC; Primedia Inc; Ingram Book Group, and its affiliate Lightning Print, a provider of books on demand; EBSCO, a provider of magazine subscription services and in providing magazine archives to libraries; and James Cramer, the Wall Street investment manager. The partners are contributing a combination of cash and services.
"Contentville," Brill added, "will be a place where people who want to curl up with a great magazine or book will get informed, disinterested recommendations, and it's also a place where people doing research will be able to search across categories of media -- from magazine archives, to current magazines, to e-books, to traditional books, to academic writings -- to find what they need.
"Contentville plays to a key Primedia strength -- content -- and enables us to exchange advertising pages in our enthusiast magazines for equity in this exciting new venture," said Primedia Chairman and CEO Tom Rogers. "It also presents an opportunity for us to sell our magazines using the Internet in a way that promises to be far more effective than many of the traditional ways magazines use to find subscribers."
"When Steve Brill presented his idea to us, we were immediately intrigued by it," said CBS Chairman and CEO Mel Karmazin. "And as it has now developed we have become extremely excited by its prospects and by our ability to deploy our radio, television, cable, and outdoor inventory in a way that is targeted right at Contentville's customer base."