Penske Media Corporation has sold TVLine to Static Media, TheWrap learned Monday.
The digital news outlet for TV-related news and features will continue being headed by editor-in-chief Kimberly Roots.
The sell-off came amid a string of corporate restructuring and layoffs at several Jay Penske-owned news sites and publications. Last week Penske ordered all employees to work at least four days per week at one of the company’s offices starting in October, leaving many remote employees forced to make a major change to their lives or lose their jobs altogether.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Representatives for PMC did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
PMC launched TVLine in January 2011. While Roots will remain in top position as editor-in-chief, Matt Webb Mitovich, the chief content officer who had been with the publication since its inception, will step down. Roots joined the publication in 2012 and assumed her role as EIC in April 2024.
Static Media currently operates more than two dozens brands, including House Digest, MoneyDigest, SlashFilm, The List, Explore, Women.com and Tasting Table.
Several of Penske’s publications have been hit with layoffs in the last year. IndieWire laid off three of its top editors in February, including Executive Editor of News Tony Maglio, TV Executive Editor Erin Strecker and Tom Brueggemann, IndieWire’s box office editor. Variety’s longtime deputy editor Meredith Woerner was among another set of editorial layoffs last October.
PMC’s work-from-home mandate will reportedly affect not just staff working for the larger PMC but at all of the company’s publications and brands, including Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, Rolling Stone, Deadline, the Golden Globes and South by Southwest. Many Penske properties do not currently require staff to work on site at all and employ people who live nowhere near the company’s four main offices in Los Angeles, New York, Austin and Miami.
