Monday, October 01, 2007

Did anyone see this coming? The BBC and Lonely Planet

BBC Worldwide has bought Lonely Planet.

Convergence of media continues apace...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

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6 comments:

Anonymous said...

leftfield but very sensible.

Simon Quicke said...

is this where my licence fee goes?

Travolution Blogger said...

Simon: BBC Worldwide is the commercial arm of the BBC and therefore gets its funding from advertising and other deals - as far as i am aware.

[but good point]

Anonymous said...

Great deal for the founders of Lonely Planet...not such a great deal for the BBC. It already has country profiles on its website and they also had a holiday section, which funnily enough has been closed. I don't see what the BBC gets for the £60 million it reportedly paid for Lonely Planet.

I don't even bother to visit the BBC website anymore. The quality is going downhill - the world news it offers is highly selective, out of date and biased, while the 'Have Your Say' section is censored and dominated by a vocal minority who feel they have to voice their opinion about every topic under the sun. Google news has links to news from different providers - much better than relying on the increasingly biased BBC.

Travolution Blogger said...

Anonymous: Fair enough.

Anonymous said...

I think its' great that an idealistic, original "hippy couple" can cash in on a lifetime's work in this way whilst still retaining a 20+% stake. Wise old hippies!! And what did they say they wanted to do with their millions? Travel more. Gotta hand it to them, they are still really passionate about the thing that finally made them their multi-million pay day.