FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
EXPERIENCED HIGH-TECH PUBLISHING TEAM LAUNCHES NEW MEDIA COMPANY
Oyster Bay, N.Y., July 30, 1999 - Two of the high-tech publishing industry’s most experienced professionals have teamed to launch a new publishing venture.
Ted Bahr, a former Group President of Miller Freeman Inc., and Alan Zeichick, President and Principal Analyst of Camden Associates and a former Editorial Director at Miller Freeman Inc., have pooled their 35 combined years of high-tech publishing experience to form BZ Media LLC, a New York-chartered limited liability corporation. BZ Media has achieved sufficient first-round funding to begin production of its initial set of media properties. The details of BZ Media's initial properties will be publicly announced in the third quarter 1999.
"We are excited that our company is up and running," said Ted Bahr, President of BZ Media LLC and publisher of its soon-to-be-announced flagship publication. "With our sales, marketing and business office on Long Island, and editorial and production in the San Francisco area, we’re able to stay close to both the advertisers and newsmakers."
"We’ve identified the needs of a significant high-tech market," said Alan Zeichick, Executive Vice-President of BZ Media, who will serve as Editor-in-Chief of the company's print and online publications. "But what’s exciting is that our business plan allows us to combine the time-proven strength of ink-on-paper journalism with the immediacy and economic model of the Internet."
Ted Bahr is former Group President, Executive Vice President and a Director of Miller Freeman Inc., a division of United News & Media plc and one of the largest Business-to-Business media companies in the world. In his 12 years at Miller Freeman, Mr. Bahr managed several different computer, electronics and entertainment groups of magazines, tradeshows and online properties. Among his many achievements at Miller Freeman Inc., Mr. Bahr was responsible for the creation of the company’s highly successful Embedded Systems publishing franchise, including Embedded Systems Programming magazine and the Embedded Systems Conferences. Prior to that Mr. Bahr worked for five years in advertising sales at Ziff-Davis Publishing, the largest U.S. publisher of computer magazines and now a division of Softbank.
Alan Zeichick has been working as a programmer, journalist and analyst in high-technology fields since the early 1980s. From 1987-1990, he worked for IDG Communications, and was recruited to Miller Freeman Inc. in 1990. As an Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Director at Miller Freeman, Mr. Zeichick led the content-oriented aspects of the start-up, acquisition and redesign/repositioning of several publications and conferences, most recently the award-winning turnaround of Network Magazine. Mr. Zeichick left Miller Freeman in mid-1998 to focus on Camden Associates, a technology analysis and publishing consulting firm.
From 1992 through 1997, Ted Bahr and Alan Zeichick collaborated on a number of property acquisitions and start-ups, including the acquisition of Cadence Magazine from Ariel Communications and the subsequent launch of AutoCAD Tech Journal and Autodesk World Conference and Exhibition; the start-up of OS/2 Magazine and the OS/2 World Conference and Exhibition; and the start of Communication Systems Design and 3D Design magazines. "We have a track record of successful collaboration to build media properties," said Mr. Bahr. "We built properties together as part of a larger enterprise. Now it’s time to continue that partnership through BZ Media."
