The National Enquirer may still be able to buy Time magazine even after it was sold to Meredith Corporation last week, according to a report published Monday night.
A Daily Beast report says the conservative mega-donors Charles and David Koch, who injected $650 million from their private equity firm into the Meredith bid to help push it through, may still end up selling off Time’s weekly title properties such as Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and People.
David Pecker, the CEO of National Enquirer publisher American Media, Inc, indicated he was interested in purchasing Time weekly titles last summer.
“I think that there’s a huge opportunity,” Pecker told The New Yorker in July.
{mosads}Pecker, an old friend of President Trump’s, never made an official bid, however, according to an American Media spokesperson in response to an inquiry by The Daily Beast.
“We have no interest in Time, Fortune, or Sports Illustrated, any suggestion or speculation otherwise is false and does not warrant further comment,” the spokesperson said.
Pecker and the Enquirer have often provided a friendly forum for news on the president.
On Monday, the publication ran a poll to see what is the “Most Fake Name in News” after Trump declared a trophy should be given out to worst media outlet pushing “fake news.”
Industry analyst Peter Kreisky told The Daily Beast that despite American Media’s claims that it had no interest in purchasing Time’s weekly publications, it’s hard to dismiss the positive effects an acquisition would have in making it the “predominant publisher” in the U.S.
“The National Enquirer, US Weekly, Star and others provide Pecker with a strong, well-established business base for weekly publications. Time and other Time Inc. weeklies would not only provide massive efficiencies but also make American Media the predominant publisher of weekly titles in the nation,” Kreisky said.