Gannett joined the crowd of companies separating publishing...

Gannett joined the crowd of companies separating publishing from other media assets, a day after Tribune completed a similar move (CD Aug 5 p8). Gannett said Tuesday it plans to create two publicly traded companies, “one exclusively focused on its Broadcasting and Digital businesses, and the other on its Publishing business.” Gannett’s new, yet-to-be named broadcasting and digital company will be run by Gracia Martore as CEO, who now runs the combined, current Gannett. It said that company includes 46 TV stations owned or served by the company, which bought Belo and its stations for about $2.75 billion (CD Dec 23 p3). Going into the broadcast and digital unit are properties including the No. 1 U.S. online jobs website CareerBuilder and automotive sales site Cars.com, of which Gannett is to take full ownership. It’s getting the 73 percent stake in Classified Ventures, owner of the No. 2 automotive-related website, that it doesn’t already own for $1.8 billion in cash, said the buyer in a news release (http://bit.ly/1v7wp9P). Graham Holdings, which owned The Washington Post before selling it to Jeff Bezos, said it owns 17 percent of Classified Ventures, while Gannett owned 27 percent before agreeing to buy all of the entity. Other owners of CV, the primary asset of which is Cars.com, include McClatchy and Tribune, said Graham in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1y2MjOW). TV stations have been trying to better compete with Web giants in serving as one-stop shops for local advertising. (See separate report above in this issue.)