NBC Universal and two private equity firms Bain Capital and Blackstone Group clinched a deal on Sunday to buy the Weather Channel from Landmark Communications Inc., according to media report.
Though the financial terms were not disclosed, but sources familiar with the transaction said the price tag was just under 3.5 billion U.S. dollars in cash.
The 26-year-old Weather Channel is the third most distributed cable network and is viewable in more than 97 percent of cable television homes in the United States.
Besides the Weather Channel, the deal also includes several related assets such as weather services for newspapers and radio stations and the widely used Web site Weather.com, with nearly 40 million unique visitors per month.
Under the terms of the deal, the Weather Channel will be run as an independent operation, rather than being merged into NBC's own meteorological offering, NBC Weather Plus, which was launched in 2004 and has long been seen as an also-ran, with fewer viewers.
NBC and Landmark said in a statement that they expected the transaction to close by year-end, pending regulatory approvals.
"This deal makes us the pre-eminent leader in news and information," Jeffrey Zucker, NBC Universal's chief executive, said, citing the company's assets in NBC News, the business channel CNBC and the news channel MSNBC. "We're No. 1 in business news, No. 1 in general broadcast news, and now we're No. 1 in weather news too," he said.
NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., became the sole bidder for the Weather Channel last month after Time Warner Inc. dropped out.
Source:Xinhua
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