The closures, which will see Sony Ericsson’s North American headquarters moved to Atlanta, will result in the loss of some 2,000 jobs. This a little more than a year after the joint venture’s last big round of layoffs, part of a companywide cost-cutting plan that also left about 2,000 people unemployed.

That has to be unnerving, but I can at least offer a little bit of comfort: The worst-case scenario the employees would be facing had they been purchased by private equity firm ZelnickMedia, which was also bidding for the publication.

The short version: Almost everybody gets fired.

Here’s the longer version of the plan, provided to me by a person familiar with ZelnickMedia’s bid. It sounds like a plausible idea for a PE group that specializes in turning around distressed assets–and a chilling one for anybody who draws a paycheck at BusinessWeek:

• Wind down BusinessWeek’s print business “as profitably as possible”–the company would have to honor existing subscriptions and could still sell ads in the magazine. But the focus would be on building up BusinessWeek’s Web site, which has a decent-sized footprint, though not a huge one.
• Dump almost all of the company’s newsgathering staff and outsource most of that work to Thomson Reuters (TRI).
• Employ a small handful of editorial employees–perhaps 20, down from the 200-plus who are there now. Some of them would run a Huffington Post-style aggregation site that produces no original content, and some more expensive hires would produce a smattering of high-quality reporting and writing designed to burnish/sustain the BusinessWeek brand. “Just to give it uniqueness and sizzle,” my source tells me.
• Dump most of the existing business side, as well, but overhaul and bulk up the sales force.

The insult-to-injury kicker: Under ZelnickMedia’s proposal, the buyer wouldn’t pay a dime for the publication it intended to rebuild. Instead, McGraw-Hill would pay the fund to take the publication off its hands. If that sounds implausible, consider that McGraw-Hill just announced that it will save up to $25 million next year by not owning the title.

Given the above terms, it’s easy enough to see why McGraw-Hill ended up going with Bloomberg. For starters, the winning bidder actually paid cash for the magazine, and McGraw-Hill will end up netting a $5.9 million gain, after taxes, on the deal.

Also important: McGraw-Hill won’t have to anguish as it watches one of its flagship properties get dismantled.

So what will happen to BusinessWeek now that Bloomberg owns it? Nothing nearly so drastic, at least in the short term. For now, Bloomberg is talking about bulking up the title, not shredding it, so that’s a good sign for both employees and readers.

Alas, Bloomberg can’t take on all of the magazine employees looking for jobs, and that pool is only going to get bigger.

Forbes slashed deep into its staff this week, and next week Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc. will lay out some of its layoff goals. I’ve heard Time Inc. employees refer to layoff plans as “tree-trimming” or “surgical,” but I think the trimming will feel much blunter to the folks who lose their jobs. The publisher’s cost-cutting plans include hundreds of layoffs–something likely similar to the cuts the publisher went through last year, I’m told.

The New York Post’s Keith Kelly reports today that Time’s News and Finance unit, which includes Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated, will be particularly hard hit, and I’ve confirmed that myself.

UPDATE: No surprise here: BusinessWeek President Keith Fox is stepping down. Mild surprise: He’s staying on at McGraw-Hill. Here’s his memo:

When we announced that McGraw-Hill was exploring strategic options for BusinessWeek, I promised to communicate with you as openly and often as I could. In this spirit, I wanted each of you to know that I will be remaining with McGraw-Hill after the deal with Bloomberg is closed. I will continue to play a role in the integration post-close and plan to take on a new role at McGraw-Hill in 2010.

During this process, our collective goal was to find the best buyer for BusinessWeek. I am proud that I played a role in ensuring that BusinessWeek has a new home at Bloomberg, where it will thrive under the leadership of Norman Pearlstine. I am committed to the transition and helping in any way that I can.

It’s been a privilege to be the President of BusinessWeek. I thank Terry McGraw for his confidence and trust in me and Glenn Goldberg for his support, direction, clarity, and sense of humor. I’ve also been a member of an amazing team which has navigated the transformation of the media environment with agility, focus, passion, and integrity.

The team–Steve Adler, Jessica Sibley, Tania Secor, Linda Brennan, Roger Neal, and Carl Fischer–is the best in the industry. Like BusinessWeek, they have bright futures ahead of them. I will miss the daily interaction, but I am wiser (and a little grayer) because of their collaborative spirit and desire to make BusinessWeek the global leader in business that it is today.

I also have a special thanks to Patricia Hipplewith, my assistant, who juggled my calendar, protected me from solicitors, and kept me on schedule and well fed! She is the personification of commitment and integrity.

I am humbled by BusinessWeek’s 80-year history. Thank you for allowing me to play a small part in it.

Keith

In its second quarter–the first with the Pre in its lineup–Sprint (S) lost 991,000 postpaid subscribers. And in its third, reported yesterday, its lost 801,000. So subscriber loss, while unquestionably gruesome, is diminishing.

How much of this is due to Palm’s (PALM) Pre? Not that much, says CL King & Associates analyst Lawrence Harris, who believes the Pre had only a moderate impact on Sprint’s postpaid subscriber base.

“Within postpaid, the number of CDMA-only subscriber losses was about 100,000 in the September quarter, compared to the 200,000 in the June quarter,” Harris wrote in a research note to clients. “At Sprint, the Palm Pre is a CDMA-only postpaid device. The number of Sprint postpaid subscribers upgrading their handsets was slightly higher in the September quarter than in the June quarter at just over 2.0 million.”

According to Harris, “This number provides some indication of the available market for all high-end devices at Sprint. In Palm’s August quarter, 85% of the company’s sales went to Sprint. Given the absence of growth in Sprint’s CDMA postpaid category, it appears likely that most of the Palm Pre sales went to existing Sprint subscribers as opposed to winning customers from other carriers.”

That would seem to be the case. Sprint rivals AT&T (T) and Verizon Wireless (VZ) each added subscribers during the second quarter–1.4 million and 1.1 million, respectively. So if the Pre did anything for Sprint, it helped to stem CDMA postpaid losses a bit.

And that’s something, right? After all, there’s no panacea for Sprint’s affliction–well, perhaps there is, but it’s locked up in an exclusivity agreement with AT&T (T). Still, when Sprint last reported earnings, CEO Dan Hesse said the carrier expected to sign up more new customers as the Pre gained wider distribution through retail outlets like Best Buy (BBY) and RadioShack. And that doesn’t really seemed to have happened. Perhaps next quarter after Sprint launches the Pre’s not-quite-cheaper sibling, the Pixi.

UPDATE: A quick addendum. In a research note this morning, Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett notes that while Sprint has reduced subscriber losses a bit, the cost of doing so has been worrisomely high.

“Yes, net subscriber losses were better,” Moffet explains. “But the cost was very high. Post-paid equipment subsidies soared to $139 per subsidized subscriber in Q3 (up 39 percent from last year), as the company recovered just 36 percent of their equipment costs….Yesterday’s results illustrate why it may not be possible for Sprint to have its cake and eat it too. After all the drastic cost cutting, after all the efforts to refresh the product line, after all the price cuts and new pricing plans, Sprint was able to manage only a modest improvement. Not growth, just a slightly slower rate of decline. And that Herculean effort almost broke the bank. The huge costs of even marginally improving gross additions (and the rate of net subscriber loss) crushed margins.”

In its second quarter–the first with the Pre in its lineup–Sprint (S) lost 991,000 postpaid subscribers. And in its third, reported yesterday, its lost 801,000. So subscriber loss, while unquestionably gruesome, is diminishing.

How much of this is due to Palm’s (PALM) Pre? Not that much, says CL King & Associates analyst Lawrence Harris, who believes the Pre had only a moderate impact on Sprint’s postpaid subscriber base.

“Within postpaid, the number of CDMA-only subscriber losses was about 100,000 in the September quarter, compared to the 200,000 in the June quarter,” Harris wrote in a research note to clients. “At Sprint, the Palm Pre is a CDMA-only postpaid device. The number of Sprint postpaid subscribers upgrading their handsets was slightly higher in the September quarter than in the June quarter at just over 2.0 million.”

According to Harris, “This number provides some indication of the available market for all high-end devices at Sprint. In Palm’s August quarter, 85% of the company’s sales went to Sprint. Given the absence of growth in Sprint’s CDMA postpaid category, it appears likely that most of the Palm Pre sales went to existing Sprint subscribers as opposed to winning customers from other carriers.”

That would seem to be the case. Sprint rivals AT&T (T) and Verizon Wireless (VZ) each added subscribers during the second quarter–1.4 million and 1.1 million, respectively. So if the Pre did anything for Sprint, it helped to stem CDMA postpaid losses a bit.

And that’s something, right? After all, there’s no panacea for Sprint’s affliction–well, perhaps there is, but it’s locked up in an exclusivity agreement with AT&T (T). Still, when Sprint last reported earnings, CEO Dan Hesse said the carrier expected to sign up more new customers as the Pre gained wider distribution through retail outlets like Best Buy (BBY) and RadioShack. And that doesn’t really seemed to have happened. Perhaps next quarter after Sprint launches the Pre’s not-quite-cheaper sibling, the Pixi.

UPDATE: A quick addendum. In a research note this morning, Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett notes that while Sprint has reduced subscriber losses a bit, the cost of doing so has been worrisomely high.

“Yes, net subscriber losses were better,” Moffet explains. “But the cost was very high. Post-paid equipment subsidies soared to $139 per subsidized subscriber in Q3 (up 39 percent from last year), as the company recovered just 36 percent of their equipment costs….Yesterday’s results illustrate why it may not be possible for Sprint to have its cake and eat it too. After all the drastic cost cutting, after all the efforts to refresh the product line, after all the price cuts and new pricing plans, Sprint was able to manage only a modest improvement. Not growth, just a slightly slower rate of decline. And that Herculean effort almost broke the bank. The huge costs of even marginally improving gross additions (and the rate of net subscriber loss) crushed margins.”

Yahoo bested Wall Street expectations today, announcing stronger net income for its third quarter, despite an also expected decline in revenue.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo reported net income of 13 cents a share, or $186.1 million, on revenues of $1.13 billion for the quarter ended Sept. 30, 2009, which was a decline from $1.33 billion the same period a year ago.

Wall Street estimated that Yahoo (YHOO) would earn just under seven cents a share on revenues of $1.12 billion.

The improvement includes a $98 million gain on a sale of the company’s stake in Alibaba.com in China, which is nonrecurring, as well as other cost-cutting by CEO Carol Bartz.

In addition, Yahoo’s expectations for the fourth quarter are more positive than those of investors.

Also in the earnings numbers: Yahoo had $4.5 billion in cash and marketable securities, as well as 13,200 employees.

But there was something to worry about: Search advertising revenue was off 19 percent and display was off eight percent at “Owned and Operated” sites on Yahoo.

Google (GOOG), in contrast, reported a seven percent rise in its recent third-quarter results last week, and its execs projected a mood of smooth sailing ahead and no more econalypse.

Nonetheless, overall, it was a solid performance from the Silicon Valley icon, especially compared to some of its recent and decidedly rockier earnings reports.

But, while investors can now breathe a little sigh of relief that the bleeding seems to have stopped, they will now likely focus on how much growth the Yahoo can have in the future.

That’s the next story for certain, starting with Yahoo’s analyst meeting next Wednesday, although today’s Yahoo management buzzword was “stablized.”

“With revenue coming in above our guidance and flat sequentially, we had a solid third quarter that signals our major businesses have stabilized,” said Bartz in a press release. “With new products like Yahoo! homepage, our brand revitalization campaign and expansion in the Middle East through Maktoob.com, our execution is improving and we’re focused on what we do best–being the center of people’s online lives.”

Added CFO Tim Morse: “In the third quarter we saw strength in key areas of our business. Our efforts to reposition Yahoo! are still in the early stages, but we’re confident that our investments in the business will enable us to capitalize on growth opportunities as the economy recovers.”

You can read all about it in Yahoo’s press release here, which includes performance tables of third-quarter results, or below without tables.

More to come at the conference call at 2 pm, which BoomTown will blog live!

Here is the Yahoo press release on the quarter:

YAHOO! REPORTS THIRD QUARTER 2009 RESULTS

Company Exceeds Revenue Outlook Maintains Strong Balance Sheet with over $4.5 Billion in Cash and Marketable Debt Securities

SUNNYVALE, Calif., October 20, 2009–Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) today reported revenues of $1,575 million for the quarter ended September 30, 2009, a decrease of 12 percent from the third quarter of 2008 and slightly above the second quarter of 2009. Excluding the impact of currency rate fluctuations and divested business lines, revenues for the third quarter of 2009 would have declined 7 percent compared to the third quarter of 2008.

Net income per diluted share for the third quarter of 2009 was $0.13, compared to $0.04 for the third quarter of 2008. Non-GAAP net income per diluted share for the third quarter of 2009 and 2008 was $0.15.

“With revenue coming in above our guidance and flat sequentially, we had a solid third quarter that signals our major businesses have stabilized,” said Yahoo! chief executive officer Carol Bartz. “With new products like Yahoo! homepage, our brand revitalization campaign and expansion in the Middle East through Maktoob.com, our execution is improving and we’re focused on what we do best–being the center of people’s online lives.”

:In the third quarter we saw strength in key areas of our business,” said Yahoo! chief financial officer Tim Morse. “Our efforts to reposition Yahoo! are still in the early stages, but we’re confident that our investments in the business will enable us to capitalize on growth opportunities as the economy recovers.

Revenues

* Marketing services revenues declined 12 percent and fees revenues declined 11 percent, compared to the third quarter of 2008.

* Marketing services revenues were flat and fees revenues increased 2 percent, compared to the second quarter of 2009.

* Marketing services revenues from Owned and Operated sites were $851 million for the third quarter of 2009, a 15 percent decrease compared to $1,002 million for the same period of 2008. The decrease was primarily driven by a 19 percent decline in search advertising revenue and an 8 percent decline in display advertising revenue.

* Marketing services revenues from Affiliate sites were $526 million for the third quarter of 2009, a 6 percent decrease compared to $561 million for the same period of 2008.

Cash Flow and Cash Balance

* Cash flow from operating activities for the third quarter of 2009 was $355 million, a 2 percent increase compared to $347 million for the same period of 2008.

* Free cash flow for the third quarter of 2009 was $258 million, a 20 percent increase compared to $215 million for the same period of 2008.

* Cash, cash equivalents, and investments in marketable debt securities were $4,503 million at September 30, 2009 compared to $3,522 million at December 31, 2008, an increase of $981 million.

Business Outlook

GAAP revenue for the fourth quarter of 2009 is expected to be in the range of $1,600 million to $1,700 million. Non-GAAP operating income before depreciation, amortization, and stock-based compensation expense for the fourth quarter of 2009 is expected to be in the range of $400 million to $450 million. Income from operations for the fourth quarter of 2009 is expected to be in the range of $135 million to $155 million.

Now we get to find out just how good Google’s (GOOG) growth story is. Read three different analyst reports and you’ll get three different descriptions of Wall Street’s “consensus” estimates for the search giant’s Q3 numbers, out this afternoon. But Thomson Reuters thinks the Street expects earnings of $5.42 per share on revenue of $4.24, so we’ll go with that.

Here’s a more detailed breakdown of expectations, courtesy of Bernstein Research’s Jeffrey Lindsay. Note that per above, his description of consensus differs from the one at Thomson Reuters (click to enlarge):

More broadly, Wall Street expects to hear that U.S. ad dollars picked up in the last quarter, that international markets have as well, and that margins have held up due to cost-cutting, because Eric Schmidt has been saying all of those things out loud in recent days. Schmidt has also continued to talk up YouTube’s prospects for profits, so expect to hear about that this afternoon as well.

One of the highlights of the annual Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, Calif., has been Google’s (GOOG) party, known as “Google Dance,” at its Mountain View headquarters. The search giant canceled it this year, however, citing cost-cutting efforts.

“Like most companies are doing these days, we’ve been looking carefully at our expenses and are being more mindful about how we spend our money,” Google spokesman Matt Furman said. “Though we’ve enjoyed hosting the Google Dance in conjunction with SES in past years, we’ve decided not to host it this year.”

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