• by January 14, 2002

CMP Media LLC has ceased publication of the trade magazine Internet Week due to weak business and advertising conditions, a CMP spokeswoman said on Friday.

The weekly, which focused on Internet strategies and technologies, is the latest magazine to fall victim to the worst advertising slump in recent history.

Earlier this week publisher Gruner + Jahr shut down its HomeStyle magazine, and in November Time Inc., the publishing arm of AOL Time Warner Inc. (AOL), closed Asiaweek, On and Family Life. Also biting the dust in the past year were long-running titles such as Mademoiselle.

Alix Raine, VP of communications at CMP, said advertisers no longer supported Internet Week as a separate marketing vehicle, given that they could use CMP's other publications to reach the information technology networking community.

She said CMP, owned by United Business Media Plc (UBM) of Britain, remains committed to that area.

"We're now going to take those Internet-related topics that were formerly part of Internet Week and cover them in our other publications: Information Week, Network Computing and Optimize," Raine said.

She said the demise of Internet Week would result in layoffs but declined to disclose how many jobs would be cut or how many people were employed by the magazine. CMP employs a total of about 1,900 people.

Publishers have been aggressively cutting jobs and shutting down unprofitable magazines in an effort to contend with the advertising slump caused by the economic downturn and dot-com bust. Some analysts have said the ad market could be bottoming and see a slight rebound later this year, but some companies like AOL Time Warner are preparing for no rebound.

Shares of United Business Media closed up 7.5 pence at 515.50 pence in London following news of the end of Internet Week, whose last issue was published on Jan. 7.

- Reuters