Bloomberg got a bargain

James Ledbetter of The Big Money argues Wednesday that Bloomberg‘s acquisition of BusinessWeek magazine is a steal.

Ledbetter writes, “No, I think the real motivation behind the buy is Businessweek.com. Yes, Bloomberg will probably keep the weekly magazine, using the ugly name Bloomberg BusinessWeek. It will slash the staff, and probably try to find a way to repurpose Bloomberg material in its pages.

“But with Businessweek.com, Bloomberg is getting a Web site with lots of readers and lots of upside potential. According to compete.com, Businessweek.com has more than 5 million unique visitors a month, about as many as Bloomberg.com. And those figures are probably low because of Compete’s tendency to undercount; I imagine the real number is closer to 8 million uniques.

“That in and of itself is a viable business, and at $15 million is a major bargain. Consider that last year, Guardian Media bought PaidContent for $30 million, and that site has a monthly audience of maybe 250,000. Yeah, OK, PaidContent has other businesses, and Guardian clearly overpaid, but I’d say Norm Pearlstine and Bloomberg have just snatched up a major player in the online business journalism world for a song, and hardly anyone has noticed.”

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