Spliff Davis goes up in smoke

FLOUNDERING web 1.0 print and Web tech publisher, Ziff Davis Media, has finally admitted defeat and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, blaming huge losses in ad revenues and subscriptions.

Ziff Davis is a fossil of the original Ziff Davis media empire dinosaur. During the 1990s, Spliff controlled a horde of related print magazines which are now extinct.

The outfit turned up in the UK with bundles of cash, and started banging out magazines the thickness of of a desktop PC like there was no tomorrow. Eventually there wasn't. The turning point may have been when a copy of PC Direct was reputed to have killed a small dog as it tumbled through the letter box of a suburban home.

Spliff's revenues dropped from $300 million in 2001 to a mere $76 million in 2007. The internet had arrived but the techie publishing firm had failed not notice.

At the end of 2007, the company was $500 million in debt with only $313 million worth of assets, according to the report.

A last bastion of Ziff lingers in the brand ZDNet.

The bankruptcy filing, lists 211 domains among Ziff Davis’ assets and names the company’s creditors (to whom it owes $225 million), including Limelight Networks and DoubleClick. Eighty-nine per cent of the company will now be traded off to pay some of those debts, with a great big $57.5 million IOU and sheepish smile to make up for the rest.

The 11 per cent of the company that remains in tact, will now be restructured in, what chief executive, Jason Young, reckons is a "position poised for wonderful growth". That is, it couldn't get any worse.

The company thinks it could exit court protection as early as the summer of this year. µ

L’Inq
Press release
Bankruptcy petition