Rival entertainment industry bloggers Sharon Waxman of TheWrap.com and Nikki Finke of Deadline.com are reportedly engaged in a bidding war with supermarket billionaire Ron Burkle to buy the industry's granddaddy trade publication Variety , the New York Post reported on its Page Six gossip column today (Friday), citing unnamed sources. According to the newspaper, bidding his gone to "the upper $30 millions." Ironically, both The Wrap and Deadline, as well as other online entertainment industry websites, are generally regarded as the principal cause of Variety 's current subscriber and advertiser losses. Four years ago Variety 's owners, Reed Elsevier, put the 107-year-old trade on the market with a few other lesser-well-known publications for $2 billion, then withdrew when it found no buyers. Some analysts say that the company will be lucky to garner a fraction of that amount today. Several pundits had predicted that the publication would be lucky to attract a bid of $20 million.

06/07/2012