It’s official. Regent Media now is King of the World – well at least the U.S. – when it comes to LGBT media. Regent this week closed on its acquisition of PlanetOut’s media properties.
This deal covers a big chunk of media serving our community. Aside from PlanetOut’s most widely recognized properties, The Advocate, Out, and Out Traveler, Regent now owns Alyson Books and the online incarnations of those properties.
Regent’s additional media properties the here! Empire of here! Networks, heretv.com, here! Films, here! Home Entertainment, here! Tunes, as well as HIV Plus, hivplusmag.com, and Gaywired Media, including gaywired.com, shewired.com and gaysports.com.
At first blush, this news could look a little frightening with one company owning virtually all gay media based in the U.S. However, the outlook so far appears to be not so bleak. As part of the advocate.com re-launch, the site has an election 2008 sitelet running and is heading into Web 2.0 territory by covering the Democratic National Convention from Denver this week with video newscasts.
What do you think? Do you think it’s good news, bad news or just a sign of the times?
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