PlanetOut agrees to sell magazine business for $6 million

Gay and lesbian media portal PlanetOut Inc. agreed to sell its magazine and book publishing business to Here Networks for $6 million in cash.

San Francisco-based PlanetOut signed a letter of intent with Regent Releasing, an affiliate of New York-based Here, which is a gay and lesbian television network. A formal agreement should be done by April 30 and the deal should close by August 31. The price in the letter of agreement is $6 million, with $1 million coming on April 30 or sooner, if the agreement is finished earlier. Other $1 million payments will be made on the 15th of the month from May through September.

PlanetOut publishes magazines like Out and Advocate, but wants to return its focus to its web sites gay.com and planetout.com, which have been contributing a smaller percentage of its revenue recently.

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The 2nd annual Power 50: Ellen DeGeneres #1

Out magazine releases the 2nd annual Power 50 list.

To create our second list, we restricted our candidates to those who are gay and living and working primarily in North America—sorry again, Elton. The rankings were determined by scoring each candidate on these criteria: (1) political clout; (2) pop-cultural resonance; (3) individual wealth; and (4) current personal profile.

We rescored the 2007 list based on the events of the past year, moving those folks up or down—or off the list entirely. Lest you think we took our task lightly, the calculus for the seemingly mercurial changes involved some serious debating: e.g., while Ellen's puppy palaver didn't even dent her popularity, Rosie's score dropped significantly when she stepped down as The View's lightning rod.

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The list