It Takes An Enormous Media Conglomerate: Peacock Devours iVillage
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Written By Reprise Media | March 6, 2006 | Share This
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NBC Universal just dropped a cool $600 million to snap up the net’s premiere women’s portal, and paidContent says that’s a $200 million discount on the asking price (paidContent has tons more on their dedicated iVillage page). That works out to about $41.50 per unique user, and $8.50 per share (52 cents per share above the site’s Friday closing price), according to the Media Stock Blog.
NBC executives spoke of the deal as an excellent way to distribute their programming - and advertising - content to an expertly built, adroitly-marketed online community - and they don’t plan to waste time doing it. Chairman and CEO Bob Wright said, “This deal gives us immediate scale in the online world,” and Beth Comstock (president of NBCU Digital Media and Market Development) added, “…Right away, I think you can expect to see the beauty of both of us.” Come again? “We’ll right away be able to bring video to bear. We’ll be able to promote iVillage as a meaningful destination.”
The iVillage people seemed excited, too. We all know the site’s reputation as an online women’s haven, but Chairman and CEO Doug McCormick also touted the site’s ability to reach men (specifically dads looking for parenting advice) and the ever-popular teenage girl demographic (through affiliate gURL.com). NBC hopes to increase iVillage’s current revenue by 67 percent by the end of 2006.
While Susan Mernit seems skeptical - “Does NBC think they’ve done the equivalent of buying MySpace, only for female adults with credit cards? One can only wonder”
- Paul Kedrosky is more upbeat. “GE’S NBC unit isn’t paying anything like a MySpace-style premium…This is an unqualified good deal for NBC,” he said. He then immediately qualified it: “…if it can meet its stated goal of using iVillage to drive $200mm in digital revenue.”
Topics: Media Convergence |