After 21 years, Alabama-based Grand View Media appears to be exiting the publishing business.
Group C Media—the New Jersey-based publisher of Business Facilities and Facility Executive magazines—announced last week its acquisition of Turf, Turf Design Build, and Tree Services magazines from Grand View Media, reuniting the brands with the online forums LawnSite and PlowSite, which Group C purchased from Grand View earlier this year.
“We’re thrilled that Turf, Turf Design Build and Tree Services are back where they belong with the LawnSite Network,” said Group C co-president Ted Coene in a statement. “The acquisition of these industry-leading brands will give us the opportunity to create new offerings in print, online and face-to-face events.”
The titles were among Group C’s targets in the earlier deal for LawnSite and PlowSite, Coene told Folio: in a follow-up conversation, adding that he was pleased to have had a second opportunity to acquire them. He said the purchase is part of the company’s broader strategy to continue to grow by diversifying its served markets and revenue mix. Group C declined to share the terms of the acquisition.
The deal appears to mark the end of the line for Grand View Media—a subsidiary of EBSCO Industries first incorporated in 1997 as Vulcan Outdoors Publishing—which has spent the last six months breaking up its portfolio piece-by-piece. The company sold seven titles to Wisconsin-based COLE Publishing in January, and another three became cornerstones of the newly formed Endeavor Business Media a week later.
Grand View’s remaining titles—American Nurseryman, Farming, Growing, SportsField Management, and Superintendent magazines—appear to have been taken offline, each of their social media feeds dormant for the last several months, and most if not all staffers seem to have been let go. Several attempts to reach Grand View and EBSCO Industries by phone and email have been unsuccessful.
