Investor Group Acquires CRACKED Magazine
NEW YORK, March 21/PRNewswire/ -- A consortium of investors today announced that it had acquired CRACKED Magazine, one of America's oldest humor magazines, for an undisclosed sum.
The new company will be called Cracked Entertainment, Inc. and will be based in New York. The acquisition marks a new chapter in CRACKED's history and a return of the magazine's operations to New York. Monty Sarhan, a successful entrepreneur and attorney, will join as Publisher and CEO of the new company.
Continuously published since 1958, CRACKED is one of the oldest humor magazines and the only surviving competitor of Time Warner's MAD Magazine. A strong newsstand performer throughout the 1990s, CRACKED was known for its irreverent entertainment media parodies and celebrity readership (including the likes of Stephen King and Jerry Seinfeld). However, in recent years, due to several changes in ownership and a switch to a bi-monthly schedule, sales of the magazine dropped.
The new owners plan to revive CRACKED through a complete redesign, a new editorial focus and an eventual return to publishing the magazine on a monthly basis. The company refused to reveal details of CRACKED's new look, stating only that it will break with CRACKED's pure illustrated format and move to become a full-color glossy featuring a mix of material. Long-term, management plans to explore opportunities to expand the CRACKED brand through other media, including the development of animated and live-action content for television, film and the Internet.
"CRACKED is more than a magazine. It is a successful 47-year-old brand in the comedy space. Few brands have had that kind of longevity, and we will seek not only to build on CRACKED's past accomplishments, but also to reposition and re-imagine the brand and to achieve even greater success," stated Sarhan. Sarhan feels that there is still a strong demand for humor on the newsstand and points to the success of "The Onion" as one example that print comedy is alive and well.
Since CRACKED's inception, the market for humor has shifted dramatically, especially with the proliferation of cable television and the Internet.
The company sees these as developments that can enhance CRACKED as a magazine. "We don't view the Internet, TV or cable as threats to CRACKED, but rather, we see them as new opportunities to reach our audience alongside the print magazine. We need to focus first and foremost on content creation, and then on delivery of that content through multiple channels. The challenge is to embrace new opportunities, not shy away from them," Sarhan added.
About Cracked Entertainment, Inc.
Based in New York, Cracked Entertainment is the publisher of the well-known CRACKED Magazine, one of America's oldest and most well-known humor magazines.
