CMP Media Plans to Revive the Byte Brand in 1999

Posted on December 19, 1998

CMP Media annoucned that it plans to revive the venerable BYTE brand exclusively as an online product, BYTE.com. When it launches in the first quarter of 1999, BYTE.com will become a core part of the company's online portfolio for business technology professionals, which includes the TechWeb technology news site and the Planet IT online community for IT professionals. BYTE magazine, which CMP suspended in June, will no longer publish in the U.S. but will continue to publish abroad.

When it debuts next year, BYTE.com will feature all-new content, including tutorials and columns, as well as utilities, and the archives of the print publication, which the site currently houses. Although there has been little or no new content added to the site since the publication suspended operations, BYTE.com records more than 600,000 page views per month. Traffic is expected to reach well over one million page views per month shortly after the re-launch, according to Tony Uphoff, vice president/group publisher for CMP's Business Technology Group.

"By investing in the BYTE brand as online-only product, we will be able to bring the same objective, analytical exploration of computer technology and application developer issues that the print publication provided to an entirely new generation of readers that may not be familiar with the brand," Uphoff said. "BYTE's loyal readers have told us that there is a void in the market for this type of editorial product. However, after talking to advertisers and carefully considering our options, we felt that the brand would best be served as an online product as the advertising community's support of BYTE as a print brand is not sufficient to warrant its continuation."

Uphoff added that he tapped veteran online editor David Sims to head up the new BYTE.com. Sims, currently an executive editor with CMPnet, has covered Internet technology and news as the lead editor on several CMP online products, including TechWeb Internet, Net Insider, and WebTools, CMP's site for Web developers. He has also played a major role in building CMPnet's multimedia efforts. Prior to joining CMP, he was managing editor of Web Review, one of the first Web-based magazines, and before that an author and editor for various IEEE Computer Society publications.

CMP suspended publication of BYTE in June when it acquired the magazine, along with three other titles and NSTL--an independent testing lab--from The McGraw-Hill Companies. Last week, CMP sent a notice to every subscriber, explaining how the balance of their BYTE subscriptions will be fulfilled. Although BYTE magazine will no longer publish in the U.S., CMP plans to continue licensing the BYTE trademark in the international markets where BYTE is currently published.