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THE MEDIA BUSINESS
THE MEDIA BUSINESS; McGraw-Hill Is Buying 2 Random House Units
McGraw-Hill Inc. has signed a letter of intent to acquire the assets of the college and schools divisions of Random House Inc. for an undisclosed sum, spokesmen for both publishing companies said yesterday. The agreement reaffirms the intention of both houses to concentrate on the kinds of publishing they do best.
McGraw-Hill, which has had only marginal success as a publisher of general fiction and nonfiction, said this month that it would sell its trade book division and concentrate on educational and informational publishing.
Yesterday the company said it would also divest itself of its training division, its Tape Data Media division and International Management, a monthly magazine that circulates outside the United States. Donald S. Rubin, a McGraw-Hill spokesman, said the company had had inquiries about its trade, or general, books from several potential buyers, but those operations remain unsold. Concentration on Trade Books
For Random House, the sale is more significant in philosophical terms than as a financial move, said Robert L. Bernstein, the Random House chairman and chief executive.
''We're putting our resources more and more into trade publishing,'' he said. ''It's what we do best, and we want to be the biggest and the best at it.''
Random House is already the largest trade book publisher, having grown internally and through acquisition. In recent years it has bought Fawcett, Times Books, Schocken Books and three British publishing houses.
Last month it caught the publishing industry by surprise when it bought Crown Publishers. Crown's assets include a strong backlist, or books that sell well year after year. Before buying Crown, which is privately held, Random House had sales of $400 million to $450 million. Random House is also privately owned. College Sales of $60 Million
The Random House college division, which publishes textbooks under the Random House and Knopf imprints, has sales of about $60 million a year. Sales for the schools division, which provides filmstrips and other supplementary materials, are $25 million to $30 million. ''Our college division isn't the biggest, but it's one of the best - and probably the fastest-growing,'' Mr. Bernstein said.
The largest educational publisher, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc., had 1987 revenues estimated at $605 million. The runner-up, Simon & Schuster, a division of Gulf and Western Inc., had sales of $498.7 million, according to BP Report, a newsletter on the book industry.
The acquisition is subject to a McGraw-Hill audit and approval by the boards of both companies. The deal is expected to close in November.
On the New York Stock Exchange yesterday, McGraw-Hill stock closed at $68.50, up 25 cents.
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