Yard Sale

Got a couple billion dollars burning a hole in your pocket? Why not get into the exciting, lucrative—okay, not lucrative, but sort of exciting—world of media by purchasing one of several publications or companies currently on the block. There's no better time to enter the media business than right now!

Actually, that's a lie. But what else are you gonna spend your money on, big shot?

First up: The Boston Globe and boston.com. Last week during The New York Times Company's second quarter earnings call, Times Company president and CEO Janet Robinson declined to say whether The Globe and its Web site were actually for sale. Today, the paper itself reports that there are two local bids and a possible long shot inquiry from New York Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman, One possible buyer, according to The Globe's Beth Healy, is a group led by Boston Celtics owner Stephen G. Pagliucca and Jack Connors, the chairman of Partners HealthCare. Under their ownership, the paper would run as a nonprofit foundation—an approach to newspaper ownership that's grown increasingly popular (at least in theory) as the recession has cut the newspaper business to the bone. There's also interest from Stephen E. Taylor, who's family once owned The Globe and sold it for over $1 billion to The Times Company in 1993.

Maybe The Boston Globe's a little too "regional" for you? How about buying a couple of Reed Elsevier's U.S.-based Reed Business Information trade publications like Multichannel News, Broadcasting & Cable, or Publishers Weekly? (Dozens of RBI titles, exempting Variety, could be for sale as well.) According to Reuters, the Dutch company tried to sell all their business titles—including flagship Variety—earlier this years but failed to find a buyer willing to part with $1.8 billion. Keep in mind you can haggle aggressively for some or all of these titles: Reed Elsevier is a motivated seller seeing as how it's $8 billion in debt.

Don't forget BusinessWeek is still for sale! (And for just $1.) If you're interested, you better hurry: according to the magazine's own media reporter, Jon Fine, there may be as many as a dozen possible buyers checking it out.

Even if you don't have the billions to spend—and no one's blaming you, it’s a tough time—maybe you want to own a piece of a multi-billion dollar company. If you buy Cablevision Systems Corp. stock (which a lot of people did, judging from the 8.8 percent jump in the company's shares this morning), you can get stock in the spun-off Madison Square Garden. The Madison Square Garden group, which will act as a standalone company overseen by James Dolan, part of the family that own the cable system, Newsday, The New York Knicks, MSG (and its affiliated cable networks), a smattering of cable networks, and Radio City Music Hall in New York City, should be on its feet by year's end. Even if you wanted to buy the Garden outright, you wouldn’t be able to according to The New York Times, the Garden is not for sale—and besides, it's a fixer-upper with $500 million in repairs planned.

If you can wait, you may get a shot at the alt-weekly chain Creative Loafing, but that'll take until late August when a Florida judge decides whether the debt-ridden company can be sold to hedge fund Atalaya Capital Management, which may or may not keep it going.