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CMP Said to Lay Off Nearly 200

'Not significant'

Media Survey CMP Media is in the process of chopping nearly 200 jobs in a cost-cutting measure made necessary by an historic free-fall in the tech economy, insiders have told SWMS.

Although corporate staff was affected, the layoffs were weighted toward CMP's Specialized Technologies Group (STG) and Business Technology Group (BTG), one source reported. STG publishes many of CMP's vertical-market and industrial magazines; BTG publishes IT titles including InformationWeek, InternetWeek and Network Computing. All the layoffs will be announced internally over the course of the next couple of weeks, the source said.

"There's a lot of people that are freaked out," the source said. "There's a lot of good people that are just going to walk away."

Three sources confirmed that among those laid off was Patricia Schnaidt, a CMP vice-president and publisher of InternetWeek; one source said that two senior sales executives from InformationWeek, Alan Bergstein and John Murphy, also lost their jobs.

Another source said that BTG president Adam Marder will assume the duties of InternetWeek publisher.

An article published Oct. 3 by Newsday quoted CMP spokeswoman Alix Raine as saying that the cuts were "not significant." SWMS was unable to reach Raine for comment.

"You have to remember that United Business Media paid $920 million for CMP, and it's clear now that it overpaid," a source said. "That sort of valuation was based on being able to build out the web businesses, and now they are all dried up."

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United Business Media, CMP's Parent, Doesn't Hide the Bad News

Republished from the United Business Media web site.

Advertising page volumes in August showed further deterioration for both the market and CMP Media.

The business-to-business information technology market as a whole decreased by 38.6 percent in advertising page volumes in the month of August, compared to which CMP Media's High Tech publications recorded a 32.1 percent decrease.

The strengthening of CMP's market share — up again in August '01 to 27.5% from 24.9% in August '00 — is firm evidence of the strength and quality of CMP's market leading brands.

CMP Media recorded an 18.4 percent decrease in advertising page volumes in the year to August 2001, compared to a 29.5 percent decrease for the whole market including a 54.5 percent decrease for the General Business/New Economy sub-sector. CMP Media's share of the market was 28.6 percent compared with 24.7 percent for the year to August 2000.

The General Business/New Economy sub-sector declined from a 20.1 percent share of the market to a 13.0 percent share.

UBM published these otherwise damning figures because CMP gained market share during the periods.

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