Ten Alps Buying RBI Asia Mags, SEO Firm To Build Multimedia Publisher

Ten Alps Singapore

Business slow in Europe? Some are buying into the East to hedge their bets: Ten Alps today announced that it is buying 10 B2B publications in Asia from the gradually-dismantling RBI. Separately, it is also buying Interface Media, a Singapore-based B2B sales and online search specialist.

Ten Alps, the TV production/online/VOD company six percent-owned by Bob Geldolf, will take a 60 percent stake in a new venture, Ten Alps Communications Asia, which will run the two companies. The new unit will be headquartered in Singapore and run by Raymond Wong, the former MD of RBI Asia, who, with his own company Karay, will own the remaining 40 percent of the venture. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The purchases build on a strategy that started around the middle of last year, when Ten Alps – which produces TV and radio content as well as B2B online TV for councils and professions – purchased Uproar Asia, a TV production company also HQ’d in Singapore, for a mere £30,000 ($49,000) in cash, with a maximum earn-out of £562,000. In February 2009, Ten Alps raised around £3 million through a new share placing designed mostly to boost its online ambitions. Adrian Dunleavy, the CEO of Ten Alps Communications, tells paidContent:UK that Uproar is a “pure-play” TV company but it will now also be used to help develop video content for the online portals for the magazines too. More on the new deals…

Print still a big part of the equation: “Print will always be a feature of what we do in Asia, but we see an opportunity to migrate more online as we have done in the UK,” Dunleavy said. The ten RBI titles are Television Asia, Asia Image, Payload Asia, Control Engineering Asia, Asia Food Journal, Pharma Asia, Electronics Manufacturing Asia, Electronics Manufacturing China, Logistics Insight Asia and Travel Weekly China.

The business model? Currently the websites are free, tacked on the back of the printed publication business, which makes its money out of advertising and sponsorships. “Our plan is to invest in online to create a commercial business in its own right. We want to incorporate more video initially into the content and also the advertising on the sites. They will initially be funded through advertising and sponsorship with the option to move into paid content subscription models in the future.”

VOD is the “ultimate goal” says Dunleavy “but it’s not likely to hapen that fast. Video based reporting and advertising will be the initial model in the next few months on the back of these or other assets.” Dunleavy wants the online business to at least reach the same level as it is currently in the UK, where online makes up 38 percent of Ten Alps’ communication division’s revenues. Each mag already is already associated with events and this too will be expanded.

Where does Interface Media fit in? As with Uproar, Interface Media will also be mobilised to support the online efforts of the publications. Up to now, Interface has done a lot of work on Yellow Pages advertising, says Dunleavy. Interface had been entirely owned by Wong’s Karay Holdings before getting rolled into the Ten Alps JV.

The move is a clear sign that Ten Alps is looking to Asia and digital for growth at a time when the TV business has slowed down considerably in the UK and the rest of Europe. “This isn’t the end of our acquisitions in Asia,” says Dunleavy. “There is good value out there. We think recovery will be better and quicker, and in the longer term more sustainable.” One area Dunleavy is looking at specifically is picking up a business in internet TV, which is a hole still to be filled in Ten Alps’ Asian portfolio.

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