• by Jason Stahl , September 21, 2008

[The future] is still very, very robust. On the media investment side, there's so much activity now. The challenge is the costs - Paper, oil, ink are going up. On top of that you're going to have another postal increase next year. A lot of people are complaining about tough economies, and we've all seen this before back in the mid-90s where it got real tough and real ugly and the ones that survived are the ones who are creative and think out of the box and say 'what about this'. Everyone knows it's quite a challenge.

 

Good quality properties still coming in, they're still going to get what they'll get. If you have a property that is doesn't have a lot of legs down the road, that's going to be a tough sale when it's a great economy, it will be a tough sale when it's a tough economy. If you have something that really has a lot of potential it's going to get what it's going to get. People look for big growth potential. They want to be able to scale it up and that's where private equity comes in. They want to buy a platform and then add on to it. They want to see jumps of 25, 35% growth. Private equity is adjusting their model a little bit. Those days of jumping into a media company and turn it around and flipping that in 3-5 years and making a boatload of money, can still be out there, but not like before. It's not 3-5 years, it's 5-7 years. Private equity plays a huge role, plays an important role, a very good role - they give an opportunity to entrepreneurs that have a very good plan and to take it to the next level because they have the cash. There's still a ton of cash out there. Private equity gets that cash to put that cash to work. Private equity does not want to go back and tell investors we couldn't find any good deals so here's your money back.

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